a/n: um... for a friend, first off! yes, this is for a friend. She is having trouble cause she broke up with her bf and this is going to be her one week aniversary of that... so i felt really bad and wanted to give her a valentine. Please be kind because i've only read a little bit into the manga with Sasori and Deidara, and Kisame and Itachi. It's reallya Sasori x Deidara fic, but there is implied Kisame x Itachi... so if anyone is disturbed by any of that... just don't read this.

Disclaimer: i own no one! just the actual story is mine, none of the people in it are mine! i wish they were... but they aren't!

Sasori POV

Boom. I stare over at the constant glances of my inane partner over my current work. The glare I shoot his direction, though, is completely unseen as he continues to work with those mouths in the palm of his hand, practicing his jutsus, perfecting them. He knows that he is nowhere near my strength, and that is why Deidara feels the constant pull to make himself the best he can be, constantly trying to practice his "art."

Art to him is something that comes and goes with a big blast in the end. He is such a simpleton. Art is something that can be seen years from now, art is something that time adds to, something that is ever growing in beauty. Boom. He will never understand.

I shake my head and sigh loudly, "Do you mind not doing that in here? Shouldn't you be practicing in your own room? … Or off annoying someone else?"

Deidara's constant half smile quickly turns to a frown, almost a silly look on his face, "I'm sorry Sasori-danna," then he quickly smirks again, "I thought you liked my art, un."

"You know just how I feel about your art," a loud snap, and he's quickly in his place. He turns back to look toward the door, and I almost feel guilty. Almost.

He never really admits it, but I think he hates to be alone, I think he just hates to be in a silent room. Sometimes I know exactly how that feels.

The familiar sound of the mouths in the palms of his hands chewing a bit of clay breaks the silence. I glance up to see him concentrating very hard on something, staring at his hand. A rush of chakara to his hand tells me to brace myself for yet another explosion. I look back down, seeing as how I know what to expect now, and ignore him altogether. Now he just means to annoy me.

One minute goes by and the chewing noises have been all that I could hear, save for the occasional grunt of frustration from Deidara's throat. Another full minute goes by and still there is nothing. After the third minute, though, I hear a bang, and Deidara quickly curses.

I look up to see that the explosion occurred while the clay was too close, and he has sliced his hand open. Calmly standing, I pull an old shirt from on top of the single dresser in the room and tear it a little, making a strip of cloth. I sit at his side, and I take his hand away from the wound, pressing the cloth there in its place. He looks up in mild surprise, but I ignore it.

"Saso-?" he starts.

I cut him off, "Can't have you bleeding all over my room."

He nods and lets me continue to press the cloth over the wound. When the bleeding finally slows and stops, I take the cloth away with a disgusting sound as the wet cloth clings to the still fresh wound. The bleeding starts again in small, isolated areas, so I quickly tear another piece of cloth, and tie it over the wound. The entire time I noticed how Deidara was relaxing and just staring at me, but now he's practically leaning on my shoulder with half-closed eyes.

"You didn't lose that much blood," I point out.

He starts as if his mind had been anywhere but here, and quickly sits up, "Sorry, Sasori-danna."

It's not like Deidara to say 'sorry' sincerely. Maybe he lost more blood than I thought.

By the way that he goes straight back to work, he didn't lose as much as he pretended to moments ago. I leave him to his work, returning to my own. Pulling one of my puppets to me once more, I start working on the joints again. The familiar chewing fills the room again. This time it seems to go for a long time, and there is not as much chakara as there was last time. I continue to sit in my silence, the only sound the incessant chewing of his hand-mouth. There is a period of ten minutes of silence following the chewing when finally there is a noise, but it's not from in the room. Outside the door there is a loud commotion before a louder pounding.

A voice leaks through the door, "Hey Sasori, open up." Kisame.

"It's unlocked, you know that," I call back.

A second later the door opens and in comes Kisame and Itachi.

"Hey Deidara, Sasori, why are you two all locked in? It's a nice day out, and those are sort of rare this time of year," Kisame sits on the edge of my bed, the majority of it already taken up by Deidara and his clay, while Itachi remains standing, "You two do know what day it is, right?"

Deidara claps his hands, letting his clay drop, "I almost forgot, un! Valentines day."

I glance quickly over at Kisame, who's smile could rival Deidara's, and then over to Itachi, who to the trained eye looks just as cold as ever, but after all the time in the akatsuki, we learn to know better. His posture is slightly slumped and his eyes hold less hate, less chill. The two claim that there is nothing going on between them, but for once I have to agree with Deidara, there is definitely something between Itachi and Kisame. I'd just never say that in front of them.

My attention is brought back when Deidara hops down off the bed and comes to stand beside me, so I shift my attention to Kisame in the middle of his sentence, "… go out too? Itachi and I were rounding up whoever would come to have dinner with us. It being a holiday and all, we wanted to have a meal in town. Zetsu already said he can't come, and leader never goes out, so it would just be the four of us! We'd be leaving in about an hour."

Deidara instantly turns to me, silently shaking his head.

I shake my head as well, though I do so toward them, "No thanks, you two go ahead."

Kisame shrugs, then grins, "You sure?"

I simply nod and Itachi instantly pushes off from the wall, "I guess we'll get an early start then."

Kisame stands and follows Itachi out the door, a silence thickening intensely after the door clicks shut.

I break it, "Why didn't you want to go?"

"I just didn't feel like it, un. Is that all right, Sasori-danna?" he turns to me, with a sudden layer of fear just below the surface of his eyes.

"Yeah, why wouldn't it be? If I had wanted to go I would have gone," that's a lie, though. I did sort of want to go, I thought it would be funny, but the pleading in that simple shaking head that Deidara gave me was enough to tear at my heart. I don't want to upset him. If he were gone, I would really have no one to talk to. He's the only one that will ever listen. I guess that I really don't give him enough of a chance sometimes. He does bug the living hell out of me, but maybe he doesn't mean to… maybe it's just that he has no other way of talking to people, of opening up. He trusts me more than I trust him.

"If you say so, un," I hear him sit back down on my bed.

I look up to see him staring and instantly drop my gaze again, picking up a puppet and pretending to drop the conversation. If he thinks it's important, he'll bring it back up. He always does.

There's a long silence, in which I make the only movement, and then he speaks again, "Why did you stay here with me? I know you wanted to go, un. You didn't have to stay."

Not looking up from my work, I answer, "Didn't you want me to stay?"

"Well, yeah, un. But…" his voice trails.

I sigh and look up, "You wanted me to stay Deidara. I understand. Trust me, I wouldn't want to be stuck here with just Zetsu and Leader and the few other people around here either. I wasn't going to abandon you like that."

"That's not why I didn't want to go," his voice becomes serious, and slightly anxious.

I let my work fall into my lap, "Then why didn't you want to go?"

He pauses a moment, as if contemplating whether to tell me or not, and then gives me his normal half smile, "It's nothing, un. Nothing."

It's not convincing, but I've learned not to push subjects with him, "Alright."

He nods and goes back to where he had left off before Kisame and Itachi and come in, and this time he seems to be working with a vengeance. A little surprising, coming from him especially. He's a slacker by nature, never really prepared, so seeing him working intently is quite the pleasant surprise. I go back to my puppets, and we work the hours away.

Eventually, what seems like only minutes, though I'm sure it was much longer, later I hear a rumble and look up to see Deidara, still working, his stomach roaring with hunger. I smile slightly at the rare sight. Deidara never lets himself get hungry enough to have his stomach growl unless we're on a mission or he's really trying to perfect something. The only thing that tells me he's close to being done is the slight twitch of a smile that pulls at his lips.

I look back down and only minutes later, I hear the working stop, a long sigh, and then Deidara's back hit the rock wall next to my bed.

I look up, "Hungry?"

"Starved."

"Let's go eat, it's getting late and if we don't hurry there won't be any food left," I stand, my own joints creaking, and head for the door.

"Wait… Sasori-danna," I pause and turn, "can you wait just a moment, un?"

I turn completely and he hops off the bed, seeing his chance. He walks, if I didn't know any better I would say nervously, over to me, one hand behind his back. I notice his injured hand and start to worry.

"I told you not to over work that hand," I gently touch the arm.

A shiver runs through his arm and I pull back, confused, as he smiles slightly, "I'm not hurt, un."

"Then why is your hand behind your back?" now the confusion leaks into my features, I can feel it doing so, slowly but surely.

He smiles, a true smile, no longer his trademark smirk, and brings his hand so I can see it. It's closed, but not because of injury, there's something inside. He places his hand above mine, and opens his hand, dropping whatever he had been holding inside, and then closing my hand in turn around the foreign object.

He pushes my hand gently back from him and then whispers, "Happy Valentines Day."

I open the hand, and it takes all the willpower I have not to throw the clay object, but nothing in me can stop the slightly surprised shout from escaping.

He frowns a little, then figures things out and his smirk is back once more, "Don't worry, it won't go boom, I know you don't like that, un. I promise. That's why it took so long to get the right amount of chakara, un. It won't go boom, yet it won't fall apart either. It will last-"

"Forever," I finish the sentence for him. I stare more closely at the figure now. It's a puppet, one of mine, the first one he ever saw of mine, and it's been recreated with wonderful detail, but then I notice a slight difference. The claws of it are all holding something in front of it. I hold it closer and realize it's a heart. But that can't be what it is, because today a heart isn't just a heart, it's a valentine.

I smile and his eyes instantly light up, "You like it, un?"

I shake my head, "No…."

His face instantly falls and I quickly, yet gently take his chin and lift his face so he is forced to look at me, "I don't like it, I love it."

He smiles and the smile, no matter how much I try to look away, seems to draw me in. I never realized how perfect his true smile really is, because he always hides it with his smirks. I don't think he realizes just how perfect he really looks, how perfect he really is. I don't know what is me has taken me to this path, or to the thoughts that run through my head, but I know what I want to do most right now, I know what I should do right now: I should give him a present too. So I do.

Leaning in, I gently cover his lips with my own, massaging his in a caressing and loving gesture, wanting nothing more than to have that smile as my own, to claim that smile as my own. He squeaks slightly in surprise, before purring into my mouth and kissing me gently back. Slowly the kiss becomes more possessive on my part and I start to kiss a little deeper, nipping and sucking his bottom lip, wallowing in the taste. He tastes like clay, sweat, and something even sweeter, something that I have never tasted before, something that I like. He pulls back first, only to gasp in a desperate breath as I do so myself. Perfectly out of breath, our breath actually mingles and I rest my face in the crook of his neck as we embrace.

I gently stick my tongue out and lick a bead of sweat from his neck, and the action sends a chill rushing through him. I don't know where this is going, or where it will stop. God, I don't want this to stop. I don't know what I can do, or say, to make this moment last forever, so for now I don't move. I think things through instead, but not too hard. I try to think, while also basking in the warmth of Deidara's arms. Finally I think of the perfect thing to say to make this last forever.

"Deidara?"

"Yes Sasori-danna?"

"Happy Valentines Day."