Author's note: we want to warn you that we're having computer troubles, and we can't get onto at school. we'll keep writing, but we can't promise that we'll be able to post what we write.
Disclaimer: you have been disclaimed.
p.s: we're not feeling happy at all right now. reviews would make us happier. normally we don't beg (much), but this is a special case. please?
--kyra

You call that art?!

"… and then the fire went out, which was a drag, but the smoke was still towering over everything and…"

Sasori tuned Deidara out again. The blond had been jabbering on about his "art" for almost ten minutes now, and he showed absolutely no signs of stopping. Sasori had checked in to see if there was any change of topic, but, satisfied that there wasn't, he returned to his own thoughts. Invariably, they too were about art, but this was real art, the kind that stayed around forever, never changing, never deteriorating. His puppets were of that type. He made them to last, and last they did. They wouldn't be art otherwise.

"Danna? Danna, are you listening?"

Sasori grimaced. Danna. How he loathed the name. Deidara had bestowed it on him several days earlier, saying that Sasori was his mentor, and so deserved the title. It had started out as Sempai, but Sasori had gotten rid of that one fast. Danna seemed to stick though, much to the redhead's irritation.

"No. Have you stopped talking nonsense yet?"

"It's not nonsense!" Deidara sounded almost hurt, which amused Sasori. Funny, that he should be so possessive over his puny imitations of true art. "It's art, yeah!"

Sasori snorted. "Art, you say? Just shows how much you know about art."

Deidara scowled. "You know more, yeah?"

"As a matter of fact, I do." Sasori resisted the urge to add a triumphant, 'so there!'

"So what do you think is art, then, if you're so smart?"

Sasori took a deep breath. This was more like it. Deidara would see. He'd realize that Sasori was right about this. "Art is eternal…"

"What are you talking about?" Deidara interrupted, earning a glower from his redheaded keeper. "Art's temporary! That's the whole point of art, yeah."

Sasori shook his head in disgust, wondering what Deidara had been smoking lately. "Are you crazy? That's the last thing that art could be! What's the point of art if it's just going to go away moments after you finish it?"

Deidara snorted. "You're so wrong, yeah," he stated. "Why would you want to waste art by keeping it? Fleetness is the very thing that makes it art, yeah!"

Sasori shook his head again and crossed his arms. "Stop being stubborn," he insisted. "What do you know about art, anyway?"

This seemed to offend Deidara more than anything Sasori had said yet. "What do I know about art?!" he sputtered. "What do I know…?! I'll have you know that I'm an artist, yeah! More of one than you are, I bet!"

Sasori stood so quickly his chair wobbled and fell over behind him. "What did you say?" he seethed. "How dare you suggest that I'm not an artist?"

"You did it to me," Deidara snapped back. "You can give it but you can't take it? That's so low!"

"I didn't lie about it," Sasori reminded him. "I was just stating a fact."

"So was I," Deidara countered stubbornly.

"No you weren't! You insulted me!"

"Oh, and you don't think you insulted me? Forgive me for thinking that's awfully low!"

"Low?! That was low?! I'll tell you what's low, you Goddam art whore. What's low is you waltzing into my life and insulting me about it!"

"And you didn't walk into my life? Who was it who insisted on talking, hmm?"

"You."

"When?"

"First day of school."

"And after that."

Sasori scowled. "Conversations under duress don't count."

"Sure they don't. You're just embarrassed to be the one who wanted to talk to me!"

"I didn't want to talk to you," Sasori roared. He suddenly remembered that they were still in school, and glanced around. The rest of the cafeteria was looking at the two of them eagerly, probably anticipating a fight. Only the members of his own table were looking away, and even they were listening. Sasori shot the entire room a glare. It didn't get much reaction. He scowled and gathered up his things, not caring that he dumped some fries onto the floor as he stormed out of the room. He hoped Deidara stepped on them.

Once outside, he started running. Who cared about chemistry? He didn't like that class anyway. It wasn't like he'd be missed, and, anyway, he had to get away from the school.

He didn't stop running until he was far enough away that he could barely see the school anymore. He crossed the street to a conveniently located green space and dumped his things onto the ground. He sank down, wondering what was wrong with him. He wasn't supposed to be like this. He was supposed to be in control of his emotions. Blowing up was for other people, not for him. Losing control was… well, for people like Deidara! Sasori was definitely not anything like Deidara. He wasn't!

He grimaced, forcing any and all thoughts of Deidara out of his mind. It was all Deidara's fault. Everything that went wrong in Sasori's life was Deidara's fault. Even things that had nothing to do with Deidara were Deidara's fault.

No, don't think of Deidara. Think of… think of art. No, art leads back to Deidara. Sasori scowled. How dare Deidara corrupt the one thing he loved?! Deidara had no right to invade the privacy of his mind like that, none! Sasori's hands clenched. Deidara was going to pay for this. He yanked a spiral notebook out of his backpack and began to plan.

"Um, what are you doing?" Sasori looked up from his fiendishly complicated diagrams into Zetsu's concerned features. Looking around, he realized that he'd probably been out here for a couple hours. He wondered if his grandmother would even have noticed his absence.

"I'm plotting," Sasori replied, flipping his notebook closed before Zetsu could think to look.

Zestu raised an eyebrow. "Plotting?"

"Indeed."

There was a brief silence while Zetsu conferred with himself, then, "Dare we ask what you're plotting, exactly?"

Sasori considered. On the one hand, he felt no desire to share his plans with anyone. On the other, well, Zetsu was his best friend, and there really was no chance at all that Zetsu would turn traitor. Besides, the voice in Zetsu's head would probably take control if Sasori refused, and Sasori didn't like Aki at all. The voice was just annoying. He shrugged. "I suppose."

Zetsu sat down next to him, dropping his own backpack onto the ground next to him. Sasori shifted slightly, allowing Zetsu to see his notebook. The pale boy looked at it blankly for a few moments, then shook his head. "You'll have to explain it to us. We don't understand a word of it."

"Cut that out!"

Zetsu frowned. "Cut what out?"

"Talking in the plural. It's going to drive me insane!"

Zetsu's frown deepened momentarily, then he grimaced. His face smoothed out as he communed with his voice. Sasori watched, wondering, not for the first time, just what was going inside there.

Finally, Zetsu's face regained some semblance of an expression. "Sorry. He'll behave."

"You sure?"

Zetsu nodded. "Positive."

Sasori raised his eyebrows. "What did you tell him."

Zetsu's face lit up in a wicked grin. He closed his eyes, reciting, "This is the house that Jack built. This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. This is the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. This is the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that at the malt that lay in the house that Jack built." He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. "Shall I continue?"

Sasori shook his head. "Don't bother. Do I want to know why you know that?"

Zetsu shrugged. "I found out ages ago that Aki hates it. It's the best way to shut him up."

Sasori shook his head again, this time in resignation. "Whatever works for you, I suppose…"

"So," Zetsu asked, leaning forward to see Sasori's plans. "What exactly are all these lines supposed to mean?"

"Are you still mad at me, yeah?"

Sasori turned to face Deidara. "What do you think?" he demanded, scowling.

"I think you're taking this too seriously, yeah," the blond replied. He shifted his weight slightly, transferring his single textbook from the crook of his right arm to that of his left, allowing him to prop his free hand on his hip.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sasori demanded. 'No, don't think about his figure,' he ordered himself silently, shifting his eyes back up to Deidara's face. How they'd wandered down to the blond's hips, Sasori would never know, but it would certainly not happen again. This was Deidara. This was the creature from Hell whose goal in life was making Sasori miserable. This was not a suitable object to think about in such a way. Hell, it wasn't even like Sasori liked the brat!

"It means," Deidara answered, dragging Sasori out of his thoughts, "that you can't hold grudges forever. Look at me. I was pretty pissed yesterday, I admit, but I'm fine today."

Sasori shrugged. "I'm not you." 'Thank God for that,' he added to himself.

"Obviously not, yeah."

Sasori scowled and adjusted the weight of his own books, holding them to his chest like Erin held her notebook.

"Maybe you should try it someday," Deidara continued.

"Try what?"

Deidara rolled his eyes. "Try being more like me, of course. What did you think I meant, yeah?"

"I'm sure I don't know. You seem to have forgotten the use of this thing called a 'noun.' I assume you've heard of it?" He deliberately made it into a question.

Deidara scowled. "I've heard of it, yeah. Why?"

"Because you seem to have forgotten to use them. Begin again, this time inserting a noun in the place of the pronoun 'it'."

Deidara rolled his eyes. "I thought you didn't like English class, yeah."

"I don't. But being friends with Itachi all these years apparently rubbed off on me."

"Can we get back to the subject of the conversation, please?"

Sasori shrugged. "Go ahead. You had something to tell me?"

"I said, you should try being more like me."

"To be brutally frank, I'd rather die than be like you."

Deidara grimaced. "Ever heard of tact, Danna?"

"No. Will you leave me alone yet?"

Deidara shrugged. "Probably not." He nodded at the clock on the wall across from them. "Lunch started five minutes ago, yeah."

Sasori sighed. "And I suppose you're coming with me?"

Deidara grinned. "Yup!"

"Great. Come on then. I don't want to spend my entire lunch hour arguing with you."

Deidara shook his head sadly as he followed Sasori. The redhead ignored him, concentrating on elbowing his way through the still packed hallways. In the weeks he'd been back in school, he'd learned that the only way to get anywhere was to shove. He'd seen what happened to those who didn't: they were forever being shoved off to one side, and they never got anywhere. They were the people who let the world walk all over them. Sasori preferred to walk all over the world, or at least at a safe distance away from it.

They were, of course, the last to arrive. Deidara vanished into the lunch line, much to Sasori's relief, and the redhead made his way towards his seat. Konan looked up as he entered.

"Are you going to blow up again today?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at him as he sat down.

Sasori grimaced. "I wasn't planning on it, no."

"Were you planning on it yesterday?"

He scowled and didn't deign to answer.

"Is he even here today?" Kisame wanted to know.

Sasori scowled. "Yes," he muttered.

Zetsu looked at Sasori questioningly. Sasori shook his head. He hadn't put his plan into action yet. There was still time. Deidara would never know what hit him.

Konan caught the silent exchange between the two and raised her eyebrow again. "Yes?"

Sasori scowled back. "None of your business," he snapped, sitting down. He reached down and pulled his sketchpad out of his backpack, signifying an end to the conversation. Konan shrugged, turning back to her latest argument with Pein, leaving Sasori to try and sketch his frustration away. He wished he had some spray paint.

"What are you drawing, Danna?"

Sasori's head snapped up and he growled at Deidara. "Go away."

Deidara, ignoring this, sat down next to Sasori. Sasori tried to ignore him, but the blond wasn't making it easy. He kept leaning forward to see more closely, his hair occasionally brushing Sasori's shoulder. And, if that wasn't distracting enough, he started reaching for it, as though he were going to touch it. Sasori yanked the sketchpad out of danger. "What do you think you're doing?"

"It's art, yeah," Deidara reminded him. "It's meant to be touched."

Sasori stared at him in horror. "Are you out of your mind?" he hissed. "That's the last thing art's meant to be!"

Across the table, Konan began to grin. Sasori ignored her.

Deidara shook his head. "You've got it all wrong," he told Sasori. "You're suffocating it, protecting it like you do. Art's meant to be set free into the world!"

Sasori's scowl deepened. "You clearly don't know anything," he snapped through clenched teeth. "You can taint your art by showing it to people, if you want, but don't you dare do the same with mine!"

Konan's eyes danced as she turned towards them. "I thought you weren't going to make a scene today," she reminded Sasori. "Not that I would mind, mind you. It's far more entertaining when you two start shouting at each other."

Sasori scowled at her. "So glad that we can distract you from your dreary life," he growled. "Sorry to disappoint you, but we're not going to make a scene."

Konan raised her eyebrows again. "Really? It certainly looks like it."

"I don't care what it looks like," Sasori spat. "We're not!"

Konan shrugged. "Have it your way. But, if you want my advice…"

"I don't," Sasori interrupted.

"I know that. But I'll tell you anyway: stop looking like you want to kill someone. That's Itachi's job, and it contradicts your saying you won't make a scene."

Sasori glowered at her, his jaw aching from the strength with which he clenched his teeth. "Konan," he hissed. "You can just turn away and leave us alone! Your presence is not helping this."

Konan shrugged. "I knew that."

"Then why are you still here?"

"Because I'm interested." She leaned back slightly. "But please, don't distract yourselves on my account. Go on. Pretend I'm not here."

Deidara snorted. "That'll be the day, yeah."

Sasori started to nod, then realized that that would mean agreeing with Deidara. That would never do! So he contented himself with glowering at Konan one last time before he turned his attention back to Deidara.

"I'm not destroying your art," Deidara informed him, picking up right where they'd left off.

"Of course you are," Sasori snapped. "You can't help it. It's in your nature to destroy everything in your path." 'Including me,' he thought, then shoved the thought away.

"What's that supposed to mean, yeah?"

"It means that you can't control yourself enough to keep anything intact. Surely you've noticed."

Deidara shrugged. "I like fire," he said simply.

"I had noticed," Sasori told him dryly. "And you like blowing things up as well."

"Like I said, I like fire."

Sasori waved this away, glancing at Zetsu. The black-haired boy titled his head minutely in question, and Sasori nodded slightly. Now was the time. Now he would put his master plan into action.