Rescue came in the form of a man that Deidara called Bob the Janitor but Ino was convinced that he was actually a troll, with his long arms and his weird gait and his giant mane of hair. She kept these thoughts to herself, however, because the troll was strong enough to pull the crooked door open and yank her and the barf-covered Deidara out of the elevator, and she didn't want to insult her saviour.
It was with an attitude far more subdued than usual that Ino tottered into Deidara's apartment. She even let him shower first because he was the pukier of the two of them. When he was done, she went into the bathroom and pulled off her dress and rinsed off the worst of it.
"Laundry?" said Ino, coming out of the bathroom and holding up the pukey dress.
"Pile by the door," said Deidara, glancing up at her from the kitchen sink. He turned back to the sink – and then, slowly, turned to look at her again.
"What?" said Ino.
"Nothing," said Deidara.
Ino looked down at herself and took note that she had walked out of the bathroom wearing only her underwear and her heels – and those slutty fishnets.
She picked at the fishnets and decided that she was too drunk to care.
"I'm thirsty," said Ino, wandering over to where Deidara stood.
"Here," said Deidara, holding out the cup he'd been drinking from.
Ino wrinkled her nose, muttered something about cooties, and drank anyway. She returned the empty cup and noticed, even through her booze-induced haze, that Deidara was making a determined effort not to look at her.
"What's wrong?" she said when he kept avoiding her gaze.
"Nothing."
"Are you pissed 'cause I puked on you?"
"No."
"I'm sorry," said Ino. "I warned you like, five times…"
"It's fine."
"Then why are you being weird?"
"I'm not being weird."
"Yes you are," said Ino, pushing herself between Deidara and the sink to study him with the eyes of a thoughtful drunk. "You're being super weird…why aren't you looking at me?"
"Because – because you're half-naked."
Ino tapped at her lip with a fingertip. "But…isn't that, like, a good reason to look at me?"
Deidara blinked and didn't have time to respond before Ino's tipsy attention drifted to his chest. "Hey. You're half-naked too."
"Yeah. Because you puked on my shirt."
"Right," said Ino. "You have, like, a lot of tattoos…"
"Really," deadpanned Deidara. "I hadn't noticed."
Ino waved away his sass and surveyed the ink that swirled across his chest and down his arms.
"You know," said Ino, "I don't like tattoos. They're trashy and ugly–"
"I so don't care about your opinion–"
Ino hushed him with her forefinger on his lips. "But – what I was about to say was, these are different…"
"Oh," said Deidara against her finger. "Then continue."
"No," sniffed Ino, turning away. "You don't care about my opinion."
Deidara pulled her back to him. "Now I care. Tell me."
Tipsy Ino was more lenient than sober Ino; she forgave him with the most gracious little nod, like she'd just pardoned some monstrous crime with gorgeous, angelic, beatific generosity. Then she held Deidara at arm's length and studied the rolling skyscape stretched across his chest and down his arms – curling clouds and feathers, wing-bursts and sunbursts of many colours…
She stepped around him to look at his back, where those skies in sunset colours continued among soft peaks of clouds. On his right shoulder blade, a flock of birds disappeared into the sun.
"It's so pretty," said Ino, stepping around to face him again and hovering her fingers an inch from his skin. "The way the – the lines are so fine, and the colours are all washing into each other – it's like watercolour…? And this blue, and these pinks and peaches – so exactly like a summer sky…And the clouds unravelling like this, and these feathers and wings twining and opening and then – this sun."
She stepped back. "It's – it's so different, and so pretty…why?"
"'Cause I designed it," said Deidara, "and I'm a genius."
Ino looked up at him and his pleased, verging on smug, face. "You ass – you were fishing for compliments this whole time…!"
"Yeah," said Deidara with a wide smile.
"I changed my mind: it's hideous," said Ino.
"Liar."
Ino waved her hands towards his chest with airy contempt. "I'll pay for you to have it all lasered off."
"Sure you will–"
"Who's that?" interrupted Ino.
Deidara glanced down: there was a woman's face tattooed on his hip in faint mauve ink so delicate and fine that it was almost invisible among the clouds.
"None of your business," said Deidara, tugging his trousers up so that they covered more of the face.
"A girl," said Ino. "Who is she? Is she pretty?"
"Uh–"
Ino batted her eyelashes and held her hands together. "Do you love her?"
"In a way, I guess–"
"What do you mean, in a way, you guess? What kind of dickish answer is that? This poor girl–"
"She's not a girl, she's – it's Saint Barbara – okay? Anyway, it's none of your goddamn business–"
"Saint who?"
"Barbara."
"Barbara?" repeated Ino with a laugh. "Who is she, like a housewife from the 50s? What's she the patron saint of? Quilting? Potlucks?"
"People like me, actually–"
"I didn't know felons had a patron saint."
"–Artillerymen," continued Deidara. "Armourers. Miners. Tunnellers. People who work with explosives."
"Oh," said Ino. "…Are you Catholic?"
"No, not that it's any of your goddamn business. But I'll use any protection I can get–"
"Makes sense," said Ino with a thoughtful nod. "You never know when a tunnel is going to attack you."
Deidara glared at her and turned away.
"Are you mad?" asked Ino.
"Yes. Fuck off."
Ino grew vexed because she felt that she didn't deserve this bitchiness. "Wow. I was just teasing you…"
"I told you it was none of your goddamn business like five minutes ago."
Ino flounced over to the mattress, kicked off her heels, and stretched out grouchily. "Tss. Fuck off yourself."
Something soft landed on her legs: Deidara had tossed her a sweatshirt.
"I don't want this," said Ino.
She kicked the sweatshirt off, fully aware that he had just done something nice as a quasi-apology for snapping at her, and also that she was being petty about it.
"You're gonna get cold tonight if that's all you're wearing," said Deidara with a gesture to Ino's Professional Slut 3000 attire.
Ino rolled her eyes. "It's July. And you have no AC. I'll be fine."
"Suit yourself," said Deidara.
"You wear it," said Ino, though really this was just an excuse to lob the sweatshirt back at him as hard as she could.
Deidara caught it before it hit him in the face. "I don't need it."
"You're wearing less than I am."
"What? I'm wearing pants," said Deidara. "Not – not the world's tiniest fucking bra and panties…!"
Ino looked down. "You think these are tiny?"
"Are they not tiny?"
"This is work underwear. This is, like, the least sexy underwear I own."
"Oh."
"Did you not see what the skanks at the club were wearing?" asked Ino. "Boobs popping out everywhere…"
"I wasn't looking at the skanks," said Deidara.
"You weren't? What the hell were you looking at? Did you have your eyes closed? They were everywhere…I'm pretty sure I saw one of Chlamydia's nipples…"
Deidara ignored Ino in favour of disappearing to brush his teeth.
"Do you have an extra toothbrush?" called Ino. "I have barf breath. I should probably shower, too…"
"I might, somewhere in these piles of crap," said Deidara from the bathroom.
So Ino joined Deidara in the bathroom and rustled around the boxes of random shit that were stacked up in there and found many interesting things.
"What's this?" said Ino, holding up a silver tube that looked like it might hold an especially fancy toothbrush, maybe.
"Blasting cap, put it back."
"A what?"
"Like a detonator."
"What's this little box?"
"RDX."
"What?"
"It makes C-4 go boom," said Deidara around his toothbrush.
"Why do you have brass knuckles?"
"No reason."
"Wow, this is a pointy-ass potato peeler."
"Ballistic knife, do not touch that button…"
"And this? Ooh, is it a shiv?"
Deidara almost choked on his toothpaste. "…That's a palette knife, you idiot."
"Oh. For painting."
"Yeah, for painting," said Deidara. "I mean, you could stab someone with it, I guess…"
Ino promptly tested out this theory on Deidara's arm. "That's for calling me an idiot."
Deidara grabbed her stabby hand and drooled some toothpaste onto it. "Enjoy your cooties."
Ino gasped, dropped the palette knife, and studied the foam dribbling down her palm.
Then she reached up, slowly.
"Don't you dare," said Deidara, watching her hand.
"Oh, I so dare," said Ino.
"No," said Deidara.
"Yes," said Ino, and she wiped her hand in his hair.
"You little fucking–!"
Ino shrieked as she ran away and, when Deidara backed her into the corner by the mattress, she wished she'd stolen the ballistic knife to defend herself, but instead all she had was the pillow, which she used to great effect by smashing it beautifully into his face. Then she discovered that the cat had been hiding among the blankets and she threw that at him too, and then she ran back to the bathroom and locked herself in.
"I found the spare toothbrush," she announced through the door some time later.
"I'm going to kill you when you come out of there," came Deidara's voice.
"I have a detonator," said Ino.
"You don't know how to use it."
"I'll figure it out."
"Please don't."
Ino took her sweet time in the bathroom. It was a mark of how low she had sunk in the last forty-eight hours that she was vastly appreciative of the luxury of peeing without anyone attached to her foot.
"I'm going to shower," she declared through the door. "Do you have an extra towel?"
"No."
"I have to use your wet one? Ugh…"
Deidara didn't answer.
"I heard you roll your eyes," said Ino, and she was rewarded with a laugh through the door. "And what the hell kind of off-brand shampoo is this? Happy Panda? It's two-in-one? Jesus, this shouldn't even be legal, it's a travesty…"
VVV
Upon completing her shower, Ino was pleased to discover that Deidara was in possession of a hairdryer. First she used it to dry her hair – a twenty-minute endeavor, because she had a lot of hair – and then she tried to use it to dry her bra and panties, which she had washed by hand in the shower like some kind of savage. However, the hairdryer was not used to this kind of abuse and it crapped out with a sizzle and a sigh without having remotely dried her underwear.
Ino opened the bathroom door a crack to announce this to Deidara. "Hey, um – I kind of killed your hairdryer."
Deidara was lying on the mattress playing with his phone. He lowered it to glare at her. "You… what?"
"It just died on me, I dunno…"
"I've had that thing for like five years and it's never 'just died.'"
"Whatever," said Ino, stepping out of the bathroom wrapped in her towel to retrieve that balled-up sweatshirt that Deidara had offered to her and that she had previously rejected. "I'll buy you a new one. One that doesn't suck."
"That's not the point–"
"Or you just buy yourself one. Kakuzu said you had like 300k – why are you living like such a poorsie?"
"That money's all tied up."
"Tied up? In what? Stocks?"
"None of your business."
Ino did not push him on this since he had already bitten her head off once that evening for prying into things that weren't her business. She popped back into the bathroom to pull the sweatshirt on and came back out again.
"Holy shit," she said, looking down. "I cannot believe someone actually owns Vengaboys merchandise."
Deidara watched her meander towards him – her bare legs, her hair tumbling down her back rather than in its perpetual bun, the oversized sweatshirt – and his mouth hung slightly open.
"What?" said Ino.
"Nothing," said Deidara, turning back to his phone. "The – uh, the Vengabus looks good on you."
"Yay."
Deidara's gaze flicked back up as she approached the mattress. "…You aren't wearing a bra,"
"Really? I hadn't noticed," said Ino in the same bitchy deadpan he'd used with her earlier. "Stop staring at my nipples, perv. If your shitty drier hadn't crapped out before I could dry my bra or my panties…"
"Great, so you're not wearing panties, either," said Deidara. There was something in the way he said this that sounded like – like his mouth had run dry, or something, but Ino was too preoccupied by her fall from grace to pay attention.
"I know. How is this my life?" said Ino with genuine sadness as she dropped onto the mattress. "I have sunk so low."
"There's always lower," said Deidara darkly as he turned back to his phone.
Ino edged herself next to him to peer at his screen. "Any news on that posting?"
"No," said Deidara, shifting to put more space between them.
"Stop scooting away – I wanna see."
"No–"
"Or – or! Can I have my phone back?"
"Yeah, you can have it back," said Deidara.
"Finally," said Ino, sitting up. "Where is it?"
"Still in the car."
"The car?" repeated Ino.
"Yes," said Deidara.
"The car. As in the Prius."
"Yes."
"The one that's downstairs."
Deidara looked up at the ceiling pensively, like he had to think about this, you know, because there might be another car up here…"That would be it, yes."
"But I can't get down there – the elevator's broken and the stairs are, like, a glistening waterfall of shit–"
"Poetic," said Deidara. "And, yeah. Sucks for you."
Ino lay back down with a sigh of the utmost suffering. "Ugh. I need my phone. I'm having withdrawals. Pass me yours–"
"No."
"What are you even looking up that's so damn important?"
"Porn."
"Ew. No you aren't."
"Yeah I am."
Ino shuffled in closer to look. "No you aren't – show me–"
Deidara scooted away as far as the wall would let him. "No, what are you doing – you wanna watch porn together? Jesus…"
"No – but I don't believe for a second you're actually watching any," said Ino, grabbing at his phone.
"Yeah I am, and it's too dirty for you," said Deidara, pushing her hands away.
"Too dirty? Yeah, right – it's probably cat videos–"
Deidara wrestled her seeking hands away again. "Nah – it's filthy – you are, like, way too innocent for this shit–"
"As if…what is it? Horse porn? Midgets? Incestuous gang bang?"
Deidara turned to her with wide eyes. "Wh–? Is that what you're into?"
"No," said Ino, rolling in closer, "it was just the dirtiest shit I could think of off the top of my head. Was I close?"
"Not even remotely–"
Ino redoubled her grabby efforts, even more curious now because if it was porn, then what the hell was it, and if it wasn't, then what the hell was he defending so vigorously? "Show me – what's dirtier than that? Oh my god, are you into weird poop stuff? It's weird poop stuff, isn't it…"
"No, it's not poop stuff, fuck off – get off, stop – give that back, you little–!"
Ino caught hold of the phone for all of eight seconds, which was long enough for her to see the following text exchange on the screen:
Sasori: girl still there?
Deidara: yeah
Sasori: gonna get your millions?
Deidara: hope so. Tmr
Sasori: dont forget my cut
Sasori: if u fail ill come to ur funeral
Deidara: fuck you
Deidara: take care of my mother for me
Deidara: …holy jesus the girl just came out of the bathroom looking like a friggin
Just as Ino was about to scroll down, Deidara swiped the phone back from her.
"Looking like a what?" said Ino. "Like a friggin' what?"
"This is a private fucking conversation," said Deidara, holding the phone well away from Ino and her snatchy hands.
Ino's mood veered from playful to grouchy. "What did you call me, you jerk? Kicking me when I'm down? When I'm dressed like a teenaged boy from 1999 and my hair's been washed with two-in-one chlorine and drain cleaner?"
"It wasn't anything mean, Jesus, stop getting so pissy–"
"I will get as pissy as I want when some asshole is being an asshole–"
"It was something nice," said Deidara.
Ino crossed her arms. "Then what was it?"
"I'm not telling you," said Deidara. "So fuck off."
"But – you said it was nice."
"Yeah," said Deidara. "That's exactly why I'm not telling you."
"Tell me."
"No. Like you need more fuel for your massive ego."
"Tell me," said Ino. "I promise I'm still drunk enough to get into a fight over this."
"Go ahead and get into a fight," said Deidara.
Ino's subsequent attempt to get into a fight was pathetic at best – each weak blow was met by a black-clad palm blocking it, and then, when she tried to bite Deidara's hand, he popped her in the face with the pillow.
Ino sat back with a sound of frustration and slumped against the wall. "You're an ass."
"If you knew what I'd said, you wouldn't say such an unkind thing about me," sighed Deidara in a put-upon way.
"So tell me."
"No. I'm done being nice to you."
"You're never nice to me," said Ino. "This is the one time you were nice to me – allegedly nice to me – and you won't even prove it…"
Deidara glared at her over his phone.
"That was a look of concession," said Ino. She sidled up to him. "I'm right, right? Admit I'm right."
"Do you always have to win arguments…?"
"I'm a lawyer," said Ino. "So, yes."
Deidara looked at his phone as though weighing the substance of the remainder of the message versus Ino's continuing whining.
He handed it to her with a black look. "Read this. And then shut the fuck up about it."
"Okay."
"You agree to shut the fuck up about it after?" said Deidara, not quite letting go of the phone.
"Yes," said Ino, and Deidara let go of the phone.
So Ino read:
Deidara: …holy jesus the girl just came out of the bathroom looking like a friggin
Deidara: real life birth of venus
Sasori: ?
Deidara: hair down
Deidara: LONG hair
Deidara: my sweatshirt no bra
Sasori: …wow
Deidara: stupid hot
Deidara: is this real life
Deidara: ?
Ino finished reading and felt a splendid blush make its way across her cheekbones. "Oh…"
Deidara let her stew in embarrassment and awkwardness for a while, which she did, because she deserved it. She handed him the phone without looking at him. "I – sorry – I shouldn't have insisted."
Deidara took the phone back and said nothing, which only exasperated Ino's discomfiture.
"I'm just going to lie down here and pretend to be asleep," said Ino. "Or dead."
She slid down under the blanket with movements less graceful than usual because she was half-paralyzed by embarrassment. Which was, Ino reflected as she hid her face in the pillow, kind of weird, because she was the recipient of daily (at least) compliments on her beauty, and was therefore accustomed to them and more than capable of accepting them graciously.
Ino heard Deidara reach to plug his phone in and then lie down next to her. She bit her lip: perhaps the difference between this exchange and the everyday compliments was that Deidara hated her, and so therefore such thoughts coming from him were rarer and that much more powerful? At least, she thought he hated her. Like she hated him. (At least, she thought she hated him…?)
And another thing: he hadn't expected those compliments to find their way to her – and so there was this lovely, unusual sincerity to them, from that first holy jesus to the stupid hot.
Oh god – he thought she was stupid hot. Oh god, why was it making her blush all over again.
"Last person in bed is supposed to turn off the lights," commented Deidara to the room at large.
Ino welcomed this information because she disagreed with it, which meant that they could have a fight about the lights and therefore move on from this awkwardness. (This was the kind of behavioural trait that made her an excellent attorney – aggressive deflection when faced with something difficult – but, on a more personal level, kind of a pain in the ass.)
"Normally I'd agree with you," said Ino, "but…this isn't a bed, so the normal rules don't apply."
"Go turn off the lights," said Deidara, more sternly this time, like that was going to impress her at all. "And did you steal my pillow again?
"No," said Ino, "and yes."
"Turn them off," said Deidara. "And that's my pillow."
Ino turned over and ignored him and held the pillow more tightly.
She felt his knee in her back.
"Don't you dare," said Ino.
Deidara proceeded to knee her off the mattress.
"Fine, I'll just sleep here," said Ino from her new position on the floor. "Not like it's any less comfortable than that piece of crap…"
Deidara swore at her, groped around the mattress, found a half-full can of wasabi peas, and lobbed it at the light switch with surprising accuracy.
"There," he said when the lights went out.
"Wow," said Ino.
"Now go the fuck to sleep."
Silence fell.
After a long moment, Ino could admit to herself that she had lied: the floor was definitely less comfortable than the mattress. So now the question was, would Deidara put up a fuss if she tried to climb back onto it?
She decided to let him fall asleep before attempting it. With the number of beers that he'd chugged post-Kakuzu, that wouldn't take too long…
After ten minutes, Deidara's breathing became slow and regular. Ino eased herself back onto the mattress as quietly as possible. She was about to breathe a sigh of relief, because she'd done it without him waking up, when his voice made her jump: "Thought the floor was just as comfortable as this piece of crap."
"I've reconsidered my decision," said Ino with, for her, a great degree of humility.
"I want my pillow back," said Deidara.
"But I need it," said Ino.
"You don't need it."
"Yes I do," said Ino. "I have neck problems."
"Liar."
"Anyway, you don't need it either."
"Maybe I have neck problems," said Deidara.
"Liar."
"Give," said Deidara.
"No," said Ino, hugging the pillow with great ferocity lest he try to steal it.
"You had it last night."
"And? I don't see the relevance."
"It's called sharing."
"That word isn't really in my lexicon," said Ino.
She felt Deidara's hand grip the pillow and clenched her arms down on it, hard.
He actually laughed as he pulled it out of her grip. "Man, you are weak as fuck."
"Hey…"
"Maybe you should do spin classes, like, for your arms…"
"Hey!"
"I'm putting this here," said Deidara, and Ino heard the pillow being plopped down between them, "and we can share."
"Fine," said Ino. "We'll share."
She moved towards the middle of the mattress and put her head on half of the pillow, and made sure that her considerable mass of hair was spread over the other half.
"Really," said Deidara.
Ino pretended to be asleep and did not respond further. She felt Deidara lift her hair out of the way (with remarkable and unexpected gentleness) and then the pillow shifted a bit as he edged onto it.
And then, finally, they fell asleep.
VVV
Perhaps it was because night had perhaps been colder than either of them had expected, or perhaps it was because of the forced proximity of stubborn pillow-sharing – whatever the reason, Ino woke up an hour later to find herself, unless she was quite mistaken, spooning with Deidara.
She opened an eye (oh god, the moonlight was so bright – oh god, she was going to be so hungover) and studied her surroundings to determine the truth of the matter. Yes, she was indeed in Deidara's apartment. There was the resident rat, gnawing on the microwave's power cord while the cat watched benevolently. This was Deidara's shitty mattress pushing a popped coil into her hip. That was his breathing she could feel against her neck. And in front of her, yes, that was most definitely his tattooed arm entwined with hers in a wash of swirling sunset hues.
Ino was a split-second away from catapulting herself off of the mattress when she realized that, at some point during the night, he had taken off his gloves.
Curiosity stilled her.
She looked.
And she discovered, with a little gasp – and a thrill of revulsion – why he always wore them.
There, hidden by his half-curled fingers, was his palm – or what used to be his palm. Now it was a mess of mangled tissue – of red and white twists of skin and flesh.
Ino stared, simultaneously fascinated and repelled. The scar gaped across the width of his hand, three inches wide and an inch high, stretched into a ghastly kind of grin – and the more she gazed at it, the more it grew dreadful and painful to look at.
She turned away and stared instead at his forearm, against which her own hand rested, fine-boned, white, and perfect against his tanned, tatted-up, work-worn skin. There were other marks on his arm, she could see them now, partially obscured by the tattoos – long white lines, deep pits and grooves, the shine of burns, and prominent veins crisscrossing it all. Things that told the story of a life much harder than hers – she who had been born into wealth and lived in an enchanted bubble, and so could contrast her flawless hand so vividly against his…
"Like a fucking porcelain doll," said Deidara into her ear.
Ino's heart skipped a beat: she hadn't realized that he was awake and that he, too, had been studying this dichotomy.
He brushed his knuckles along her forearm and up to the end of her fingertips. And part of Ino – the squeamish, disease-fearing, pansified part of her – wanted to flinch away, because she'd seen the mutilated underside of that hand and she didn't want that goriness anywhere near her–
"How are you so soft," whispered Deidara. "It makes no sense."
Then the petty, squeamish, pansified part of Ino was quashed by a swell of something so unexpected that she couldn't quite place it. Compassion, empathy, pity – something along those lines, something that made her quell her desire to flinch, something that made her not say, disgusting, don't touch me…
Deidara dropped his hand onto the mattress, palm down, so she couldn't see the mess of it. Across his knuckles danced faded clouds of light blue ink.
And her hand lay beside his, yes, like a fucking porcelain doll's, with fingers that never lifted anything heavier than a pen or touched anything rougher than her ivory piano keys, and skin as soft as all of the expensive Parisian creams in the world could make it, and manicured nails in Monaco white.
She pulled her hand into her chest, embarrassed, somehow, at its perfection.
"You want to ask what happened," said Deidara.
"Yes."
"Don't."
"Okay."
Silence fell. Ino watched Deidara's hand make a fist into the mattress, so tight that his knuckles grew white through the blue clouds of ink.
Then he relaxed his grip and sighed into her hair.
"I fucked around with silver nitride."
"Oh."
"It's a contact explosive."
"Oh."
"I was coked up."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
Deidara shifted his other arm – the one that was currently serving Ino as a pillow – and she saw, briefly, the matching scar lashing its way across his other palm, before he pulled it away.
"You could've died," whispered Ino.
"I know."
"I'm – I'm amazed you didn't lose more mobility – or fingers…"
"Believe me," said Deidara into her hair. "I lost a lot…"
He let the sentence trail off. Again his fingers dug into the mattress and Ino, watching the skin stretch over his knuckles, understood the extent to which this slow, whispered conversation – this somber pillow-talk about him blowing up his own hands while off his face on cocaine – was a painful thing.
Her lips were parted, ready to form vague platitudes and perhaps words of pity. But as she took a breath to speak them, she knew that they would be of no use to him – and, beyond that, probably unwelcome.
So she swallowed the words and watched, mute, as Deidara gripped at the mattress in restrained powerlessness or aggravation or simply pain. Veins ridged the back of his hand; blue-green striations among the faded sky.
Again she felt the warmth of Deidara's sigh in her hair. Again his hand relaxed against the mattress.
"I can still work with my hands." He spoke with reticence; the words were not coming easy. "I can still make my explosives. I can still drive. I can still write, if I have to. But the – the finer control is all gone."
The finer control…Ino's gaze drifted to the canvases that were stacked six deep against the walls with their thick, frustrated lines of angry colour. Every canvas was beautiful in a powerful, abstract way: these controlled splashes of paint and these wide swathes of pigment, each so perfectly placed and so expressive and yet – and yet so raw.
Then she looked at Deidara's forearm – the swirling tattoos, the delicate lines of cloud and sky, the fine-spun details of wing and feather – and she understood.
She reached out with a forefinger and touched the fragile whorls of the cumulonimbus that curled towards his wrist. "You…you used to draw like this."
"Yeah."
"And now you can't."
He didn't answer her – and so confirmed her understanding. Her finger traveled the curling clouds, the slow meandering loops that formed these outlines that captured summer's end in a skyscape on his skin, these blues and pinks and mauves intermingled. She stopped where wrist met palm – where the peaceful sky disappeared and the war began, and her fearful fingers dared not touch.
And it was absurd, but Ino found herself blinking away tears.
"I must still be drunk," she whispered. "Why is this making me so sad?"
"I must still be drunk," muttered Deidara into her hair. "Why am I talking to you about this? I don't talk to anyone about this…"
Ino wiped at the one or two tears that had managed to escape and sniffed, and told herself, yes, it was definitely the booze. That's what was making her weepy – that's what was making her sad. Because why the hell else would she care that some artist-thief-whatever had, in a moment of weakness or idiocy, decided to fuck around with his explosives while he was high and so ruined the hands that made his art possible, these whirling wings and these arcs of summer sky that would never be drawn again…Why the hell should she care that canvases of failure after failure accumulated against his walls while these memories of what he had lost forever were embedded in his skin? Why the hell should she care about any of these beautiful tragic things?
And obviously it was the booze that was making him voluble now, so that he had opened up on a subject that was so obviously so painful, with her of all people (her, who he hated; her, who couldn't care less if she tried) and exposed this raw and aching part of himself to her, as if she wanted to know anything about it at all…
Yes, they were still drunk, drunk and having a Moment.
"I haven't even let anyone see that in years." Deidara pulled his arm away, close-fisted to hide his palm.
"It's not that bad," said Ino, more out of consideration for his pride than for the truth.
"Yeah. That's why you fucking gasped when you saw."
Ino bit her lip; so he'd heard that, had he…?
"I just – hadn't expected it," said Ino.
"Right," said Deidara. "Whatever."
The Moment was over, dissipated as quickly as it had come. And so it should be, thought Ino – because such soft moments of caring and solicitude were the prerogative of friends or lovers, not erstwhile, unwilling allies using one another to fix up their respective affairs, with every intention of ditching each other forever afterwards.
Deidara pulled his arm out from under Ino's head, rolled over, and pretended to fall asleep again.
And Ino pretended too, until she fell asleep for real.
VVV
Author's note: tell me what you think. Tell me!
