Note: Thanks so much to sasodei-iz-awesome, DustFlower, kally77, A-shadow-of-a-doubt, Sweetciel, BomberBrat, Dark Kisuna, Sekre, Shikirou, RANDOMNATIONS, angel61991, and DemonFromHell for the lovely reviews. It's seems I'm alone in the opinion that they're better than backrubs. :P I guess I'll just have to make Deidara feel Sasori up more in reward, huh?

Note 2: Since the school year's starting for me on Monday (yes, we who are on the quarter system really do start this late :P), I won't have as much time to update this fic. I promise to still post once a week, but I probably won't make twice a week as much any more. Cursed school! It's interfering with my gay ninja fics! :P

Flesh and Blood
by Kantayra

Chapter Fourteen – An Imitation of Nature

"All art is but an imitation of nature." – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

--

Present day…

Deidara had taken to soaring over the desert, sometimes for days at a time, of late. That was all right with Sasori, though, because he had more than enough work to occupy his time: three bodies to be converted into puppets, three puppets to repair, and two more to upgrade. He'd been working from dawn to dusk for the last couple of weeks.

The time spent apart was actually quite nice. Sasori was forced to grudgingly concede that he didn't mind Deidara's company, but two people couldn't possibly spend all their time together and not eventually drive each other crazy, no matter how well they got along. Deidara worked well like this; he always had enough to do that he didn't need Sasori's constant attention. Since Sasori didn't have that much attention to give, it all worked out.

The second time Deidara returned, however, Sasori got the clear impression that Deidara was looking for something. Deidara had been on edge that evening, and Sasori had left him alone with their maps. Sasori was pretty sure Deidara was trying to find them a hideout. If that was the case, then he wasn't about to get within ten feet of Deidara when he was in nesting mode.

Sometimes, while Sasori worked, he'd hear a distant 'boom,' echoing over the desert. Deidara usually came back to their temporary cave soon after that happened. One time his entire face had been covered with soot. Sasori didn't ask.

Things had continued that way for some time – Sasori didn't bother to keep track of the days; his mind was occupied elsewhere – when one afternoon Deidara returned suddenly and yanked Sasori away from his work.

"Come on, I want to show you something." Fingers tugged persistently at Sasori's sleeve.

"I'm working," Sasori glared up at him.

"You're always working," Deidara retorted. "You can spare a few hours."

"I could spare a few hours, if you hadn't blown half of Katsura's chest out," Sasori complained. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to repair these chakra pathways?"

"After he blew you halfway across that canyon, I'd think you'd be grateful that I took him out for you," Deidara retorted, crossing his arms over his chest sullenly.

"That's your job," Sasori said blandly. "Now, let me finish this."

Deidara leaned back against the cave wall and stared at Sasori while he worked.

Sasori did his best to ignore him; after all, this was a very delicate operation. He found the broken end of one vein in Katsura's abdomen and stuck it carefully to the wooden frame he had created to replace Katsura's exploded parts.

Deidara coughed pointedly.

Sasori found two more veins and attached them to the first one. They hadn't fit together when Katsura was alive, but that didn't matter to Sasori. All he needed was for Katsura's eyes to function; the rest was irrelevant.

Across the cave, Deidara began snapping clay in his mouths…loudly.

Sasori frowned and pushed his chakra into the reunited veins. There was an answering spark in return that told him this connection was good. Only a hundred or so more to go, and he'd have enough power to try that eye technique out for himself.

"Are you done yet?"

Sasori flicked a chakra string over to Jirou to make him lash out with his scorpion tail. Deidara let out a little yelp but leapt out of the way in time. "I said I'm working," Sasori snarled in Deidara's direction.

"Yeesh," Deidara grumbled. "I heard you the first time, yeah?"

"Could've fooled me," Sasori retorted.

"You're such a spoilsport. Forget I asked." Deidara stalked out.

Sasori let out a frustrated sigh and returned to his work. He got seven more connections made before he decided he needed a break to clear his mind for a bit.

"I'll be done this time tomorrow," he informed Deidara, emerging from the cave to watch the sun shine high in the sky.

Deidara shrugged and returned to molding his clay.

"Whatever." Sasori turned to go back inside. He refused to apologize.

--

Five months ago…

Thirty seconds after Sasori awoke in Hideaki's body, he fainted. It was rather symbolic of how he felt about the whole situation, to tell the truth.

"Hey!" he heard Minoru's voice calling far too loudly and far too close when he awoke again. "Are you all right?"

"No," Sasori snapped. He tried to smack Minoru with his tail, and then realized that he didn't have a tail. He didn't have chakra strings, either. His eyelids didn't seem to want to work. He tried to remember how he was supposed to open them and finally figured it out.

"What happened?" Minoru looked worried. "Heatstroke?"

Hideaki's consciousness decided to swoop back in for a moment to identify the man as a friend. Sasori batted away the impulse; he didn't have friends. He got his jaw open, tried to talk, and passed out again.

"Okay, try to breathe slowly," Minoru was still talking when he woke up for the third time.

It took moment for Sasori to process those words. Idiot, I don't breathe! was his first thought. Then he realized that he did have to breathe now, and – fuck – his chest wasn't moving. He opened his mouth and force-sucked air into his lungs. It felt like a relief for a second, and then it became downright painful.

"What the hell? Stop holding your breath." Minoru was starting to sound frustrated.

Sasori let his chest relax. The air went out. He waited until he felt a bit dizzy again, then sucked air back in. Out again, in again; out again, in again. How the hell did humans do this all day long? Sasori couldn't remember ever having to think this much about breathing back when he was a kid.

"Feeling better?" Minoru rested a hand on Hideaki's forehead to check his temperature. "You should probably still take the afternoon off, though. I can get Akio to cover your shift."

Sasori found the right muscles to move his head and nodded jerkily. The movement made him dizzy in a whole different way. Apparently, moving was going to be a pain, too. He realized with growing horror that it would be months until he could transfer back into a puppet body, and he was already about to go insane from the tedium of minutes like this.

A flurry of activity surrounded him, and he couldn't really pay attention to any of it because it was confusing enough trying to figure out what thought moved what part of the body. It wasn't something Sasori had ever been conscious of before he'd turned himself into a puppet. He eventually got to the point where he put all his mental energy onto one limb and imagined the thought flowing down through the bones until it lifted.

He tried it on one hand and was able to raise his wrist clumsily, just as several guards hefted him onto a stretcher. He realized around the same time that he hadn't been thinking about breathing, and yet he still hadn't passed out. Apparently, if he didn't think about breathing but didn't subconsciously suppress the movement either, his body could breathe on its own. That, at least, was some limited consolation.

"We need to get him to a doctor," Minoru continued to chatter on, still far too loud. "I think we can find—"

Sasori focused his mind on his lips, formed them into a perfect circle, and managed to grind out, "No."

Minoru looked down at him in surprise. "Are you sure? That was a pretty nasty fall and—"

"Home," Sasori insisted. Thankfully, talking was the easiest thing he'd done so far. It wasn't too different from the way he made his puppets speak: control the shape of the mouth from the inside, then push wind through the throat.

"All right, we're taking you home," Minoru informed him, placing a hand on Sasori's forehead again.

Sasori could fell the stretcher jostling and the sun beating down on his face. He could hear the grunts and chatter of the men and the pounding of their footsteps. The world was bright, over-vivid, and there was something cloying at his insides. It took Sasori a full two minutes to realize that the sensation was smell, and it was some sort of food coming from the stand they'd just passed. He realized, with dawning horror, that he was actually going to have to eat while in this body.

Sasori had always been afraid of death, but never because of what he thought lay beyond. Death had always been an absence of existence to him, nothing more, nothing less. Hell never even entered the equation.

In a way, that was good because, as feelings bombarded Sasori from all sides for the first time in two decades, he knew that this was what hell really was.

It was some limited consolation that, if this frail body were to die, at least the torture would end.

--

Present day…

"Hey!" Deidara protested. "No peeking!"

Sasori gritted his teeth. "This is stupid. Can I just open my eyes already?"

"No," Deidara insisted, "it's a surprise."

"You're about to be the victim of a surprise homicide," Sasori grumbled under his breath. He continued to march forward, guided by Deidara's hands on his shoulders. At least this was better than earlier when he'd been blindfolded and flying. Sasori wondered if Deidara was actually leading him somewhere, or if he was just seeing how long he could mess with Sasori's head before Sasori wouldn't take it anymore.

"We're almost there now, I promise." Deidara turned Sasori's shoulders abruptly. Instead of walking upward, they were now on a level surface.

They walked a few feet, and Sasori could feel that the sun was no longer shining directly on him. "Where on earth are you taking me?"

"You'll find out soon." Deidara turned Sasori's shoulders again, and they marched to the right a few feet. "Okay, stop."

Sasori scowled and did so. "Can I take off this stupid blindfold now?"

"No. No peeking!" Deidara left Sasori for a moment, and Sasori could hear some fussing noises. Then, Deidara was standing behind him again and untying the blindfold. "Tada!" he said proudly when the dark cloth finally fell from Sasori's eyes.

Sasori blinked. It wasn't as bright here as it was in the middle of the desert, but it was still bright enough that it took his eyes a moment to adjust. When they did, he blinked again. "It's a cliff," he said disinterestedly.

"Isn't it perfect?" Deidara beamed. He walked up to the rocky surface and ran his hands over it carefully.

Sasori looked around. High above them, the cliff jutted sharply outward, protecting this area from direct sunlight. Sasori could see that there was another cliff face opposite them. Judging by the distance, they were in a narrow wadi, fairly high up. He walked over to the edge and looked down. It was at least a hundred-foot drop. The rock they stood upon formed a little shelf along one side of the canyon, surrounded on all sides.

He turned back to Deidara. "Perfect for what?"

Deidara rolled his eyes at Sasori like he was being difficult on purpose. "Our new hideout, of course!" He stretched his arms out to encompass the whole ledge beneath the overhang. "Can't you see it right now?"

Sasori saw a bunch of rocks and a cliff. He raised a speculative eyebrow. "It's hard to get to," he finally concluded.

"Which is an advantage," Deidara insisted. "Pursuing ninjas won't be able to get up here easily, yeah?"

"How am I supposed to get up here?" Sasori retorted, crossing his arms over his chest. "I can't fly."

Deidara batted a dismissive hand his way. "So you can use earth techniques or fly up with me."

Sasori looked around again. It wasn't a bad location, per se; he just couldn't see why Deidara had decided that this particular cliff was better than all others. "Why this place?" he finally asked with a sigh.

Deidara grinned at that and proudly produced a map from within his cloak. He knelt down and unrolled it along the rock floor. "This," he pointed, "is where we are."

Sasori knelt down beside him and smirked. The spot on the map indicated nothing but open desert. "You sure about this, brat?"

"I've been doing aerial recon for weeks," Deidara insisted. "It's not on here."

"But there's a stream in this canyon." Sasori considered the matter. "How could anyone making a map miss that?"

"The water bubbles up from underground, back at the source of the canyon. It's not enough to trickle outside where anyone could see it."

"An unmapped water source. Nice."

Deidara rolled the map up. "What do you say, Master? Is it home?"

Sasori glanced at the cliff face. "It needs work," he concluded.

Deidara beamed at the suggestion. That was when Sasori remembered, with sudden horror, just how much Deidara liked interior decorating.

"Help!" he whimpered to no one in particular as Deidara assaulted him with an entire armful of household floor plans.

--

Five months ago…

It should have been a relief when Sasori was finally left alone in Hideaki's little shit hole of an apartment. At least there were no more people squawking and fussing and creating a commotion. On the other hand, Sasori was faced with an entirely new kind of torment.

Sensation was everywhere.

The floorboards squeaked every time the upstairs neighbor's cat moved, and Sasori was pretty sure that cat knew he was down here suffering, because it moved as often as possible. The wind rustled the leaves outside and whistled through the blinds. Birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and it was all driving Sasori insane.

There were a million little things he'd forgotten about being human, and he was discovering all over again how he hated them all. For example, the inside of the right wrist of this body kept itching for no damned reason. Sasori glared at it, but it continued to spike with annoying feeling.

His toes felt a bit too warm under the blankets, too. Honestly, toes were one of the most worthless parts of the human body, so why on earth were they preoccupying him so much? Every few seconds or so, he'd notice another detail was slightly uncomfortable, or even comfortable, and it would cause his mind to fret until he corrected the problem. No wonder humans never got anything accomplished; they spent too much time tending to their bodies' idiotic needs.

He sure got a lot of practice making this body shift and move over those first few hours, though. He could vaguely remember, as if through a haze, that he'd experienced something similar but in reverse when he'd first converted his body. Things had been almost too peaceful for him at first, without his body creating a myriad of distractions.

Right now, Sasori couldn't imagine anything being too peaceful. He felt as though he was trapped within the longest, most chaotic battle of his life. Everywhere was noise: of sight, of taste, of smell, of hearing, of touch…even of mind.

The entire world was oversaturated with every kind of experience, and Sasori couldn't shut them out, no matter how hard he tried.

When he'd been a child, Sasori had thought that being alone was the quietest thing in the whole world.

It turned out being alone was noisy, messy, and giving him a headache. Sasori wondered why he hadn't just let himself die.

--

Present day…

Sasori focused the earth chakra into the palm of his hand and ran it over the surface of the wall. Beneath his palm, the rock face smoothed out to form a flat, even surface. It was dreadfully dull, making walls, and Sasori had been doing it all day.

Deidara was in the next room…creating the next room. As was usually the case, Sasori was good at precise control and working out the fine details; Deidara was good at massive expressions of power. That was why Deidara was digging out the rooms of their new hideout in the cliff-side, and Sasori was left to make the rooms habitable.

A loud sound of crunching and crashing sounded through the door Deidara had made deeper into the mountain. Sasori paid it no attention until an avalanche of rock shards emerged from the room, followed by a massive cloud of dust.

Sasori scowled down at where several pebbles had collided with his foot. His cloak was now dusty from the knees down.

Deidara emerged from the doorway coughing. "So, it turns out you've got a larger workroom than the plan said," he offered sheepishly, scratching the back of his head. The blond hair was now long enough that it trailed down his neck. As Deidara rubbed at it, a halo of dust emerged from his hair to surround his head. He coughed more.

"Somehow, I'll manage to survive," Sasori said with a smirk.

Deidara glared at him, took a deep breath, and focused his chakra again. With a massive blast, he knocked all the rocks through the room and out their front door. Sasori could hear some of them clattering down the side of the cliff face outside.

"Okay," Deidara said with a sigh, sliding to the ground against the far wall. "I think that's it for me today. We don't need a kitchen tonight anyway."

Sasori winced at the thought of more deer jerky. "Or windows," he added snidely.

Deidara scowled up at him.

Sasori smirked back.

If Deidara was to be believed, the entire village of Iwa suffered from a bizarre affliction where they thought windows should be narrow, horizontal rectangles high up by the ceiling. Sasori, having grown up in a civilized place, knew that windows should be round and low to the ground.

They'd spent most of the afternoon arguing over window shapes, and Deidara had eventually come to the conclusion that Sasori wasn't going to let him have his way on this point.

"Toss me the water, yeah?" Deidara finally said wearily.

Sasori finished off the wall he'd been working on and picked up both their canteens. Sand and gravel crunched beneath his feet as he made his way over to Deidara; there was a reason he hadn't bothered finishing off the floors while Deidara was still 'excavating.'

"Here." Sasori thrust Deidara's canteen out towards him.

Deidara took it gratefully and drank deep while Sasori sat down beside him. "It's coming along nicely, yeah?" he finally said happily.

Sasori grunted. They had shelter for the evening; that was good enough. They'd have to make quite a few purchases – or thefts – for the place to look like an actual home, though. "Do you have enough chakra to fly still?" he asked.

Deidara nodded. "Why?"

"I want to move my puppets as quickly as possible. Two of the bodies are still human enough that they can't fit in scrolls."

"We can do that next," Deidara agreed. "I think there were some rugs in the stuff we stole from that first caravan. I know there were a couple of lanterns. This place will need a bit of light this evening, yeah? And we can't have a fire indoors."

"Whatever you want." Sasori really didn't want to discuss these things.

"We'll have to go into town at some point, so I can find parts to build a generator," Deidara continued. "And we'll need furniture, too. Most of the nice stuff won't be on caravans. Ooh! And curtains!"

Sasori smacked him in the stomach and got up.

"Hey, what was that for?"

"If you have enough energy to babble, you have enough energy to help me fetch my puppets." Sasori tapped his foot impatiently.

"Yeesh, fine. Bitchy, bitchy," Deidara grumbled. He followed Sasori outside and created a vulture for them to fly out back to their old camp. "Hold on tight," he teased, looping an arm around Sasori's waist. His hand slipped down just a little bit lower than was appropriate and half squeezed Sasori's ass.

Sasori was pretty sure he was being molested on purpose. "Just what do you think you're doing?" he asked, raising an imperious eyebrow.

Deidara's grin was much too wide; no way had the grope been an accident. "Testing my boundaries," was Deidara's cheeky reply. He returned his hand to its proper place on Sasori's hip.

"Brat," Sasori sighed.

They took off together over the canyon.

--

Five months ago…

Hideaki was 'out sick' for a grand total of eight days. Sasori actually had been sick several of those days. He'd developed a terrible fever and couldn't stop shaking. It seemed that Hideaki's body was trying to fend off Sasori's invading cells like a virus. It was pathetic, really, that a mere immune system was trying to take Sasori on. He had defeated it ruthlessly, replacing the DNA in those cells with his own first. It was still annoying, though.

He'd suffered from dehydration and hunger during his sickness, though. He knew this body needed food and water, but he was terrible at gauging how much. It reminded him of that one time Deidara had bought a houseplant, and Sasori had managed to kill it in two days. Even Deidara had been in awe of his incredible ability to misjudge water and plant food.

He finally got into a system where he drank a glass of tap water every four hours and ate a meal every eight. It was a stupid schedule to remember, but it seemed to be keeping him alive so far.

Food had been something of a mystery to him. Hideaki had had some sushi, but by the time Sasori thought to eat, it smelled a bit foul. Sasori wasn't sure whether it was supposed to smell like that or not, but he didn't take any risks.

That was when he found the protein bars in Hideaki's cabinet. They were designed for ninja on long missions, and Sasori remembered that they provided at least enough nutrients to keep a human alive indefinitely.

He'd bought a dozen boxes at the market the next day.

All in all, he'd been feeling well enough to move around on the fifth day, he'd left the apartment for the first time on the sixth, and on the seventh Sasori thought that maybe he would survive this ordeal, after all. He still hated it, though.

On the eighth day – the last day before he returned to acting out the monotony of Hideaki's daily life – he composed a message to Deidara:

To: Nijuuni Deidara. Ame, Rain Country

From: Shuriken Emporiums Home Office. Hisoka, Tea Country

Looking for great deals on quality weapons? Come, visit our stores in 46 convenient locations throughout the 5 Shinobi Nations! We have the best deals around!

It was the sort of pointless junk mail that every ninja got daily, and thus it was the perfect prearranged signal. The message was deciphered by two points: the return address, and the first word in the second sentence. It was so brief and to the point that it was practically indecipherable: "Hisoka, Tea Country. Come." Pain could examine the blasted thing with his Rin'negan all day, and he wouldn't be able to distinguish it from any other junk mail.

Sasori tore off the bottom left-hand corner – the signal of authenticity – and then examined his message. To tell the truth, he'd never quite believed this day would come. He'd made his offer to Deidara on an impulse, and although they hadn't spoken about it in years, it had weighed heavily on Sasori's mind on more than one occasion.

Deidara was, above all else, an annoying brat. He was loud and flirtatious and always blowing something up. More often than not, he was a nuisance.

It also hadn't really occurred to Sasori how much he was risking, contacting Deidara. Their signal was subtle, but not perfect. For all he knew, Pain had Zetsu scout out every single location they got mail from. Who knew how paranoid the Akatsuki leader really was? If Sasori was found now, he was as good as dead.

He left the letter on the table that night before he went to bed. He left it again the next morning when he went to work for the first time.

Whatever he chose to do, it wasn't a decision to be made lightly.

--

Present day…

They finally arrived back at their new home after the sun had set. Deidara went inside and began lighting lamps; Sasori had to admit that the depth of the crevasse was good for concealing the light from the outside world.

He stayed out on the natural cliff ledge and tended to his works-in-progress. They'd had to move Katsura and Mikazuki on two separate trips, and both moves had been delicate. Katsura was still in critical condition – or as critical a condition as a puppet could be in – and Sasori checked all the chakra paths he'd reconnected so far, satisfied that he could take a break and continue to work on Katsura in the morning.

Finally, he returned to their house in the cliff face to discover that Deidara had been redecorating. Specifically, Deidara had furnished half the place. Sasori blinked slowly at the sight of shelves, a low table, and a large box of kitchenware in one corner. Deidara was humming to himself in the bedroom.

Sasori nervously peeked inside to find Deidara unrolling their old futon from Hideaki's place. "You brought this all with you," he said in disbelief.

"Well, yeah." Deidara brushed his hands off on his cloak. "What do you think? It's not bad for a start, and we'll need a bigger bed at some point, but—"

"Deidara?" Sasori cut him off.

"Yeah?"

"How did you bring all this stuff with you?"

"Oh, easy. In scrolls."

Sasori's eye twitched. "How many scrolls did you bring?"

"Only three," Deidara insisted.

"Three?" Sasori repeated incredulously.

"Of course, two of those scrolls were filled with other scrolls, and a couple of those were filled with other scrolls, too."

Sasori gaped.

"What?" Deidara demanded.

"You," Sasori said wearily, "are insane."

The next morning, though, when Sasori woke up on a soft mattress, he was the last one to complain. Until, of course, he realized that he'd spooned up behind Deidara in his sleep and had wrapped his limbs all around the brat.

"Bah!" he complained, getting up.

It was nice to be home.

Thanks so much for reading! And: Are reviews better than ass gropes? I suspect I'll be alone in thinking 'yes' once again. :P