Chapter One:
Two Years Later
In the years that Deidara and Moriko had worked together they had developed something akin to friendship, bordering on something more. But neither knew how to advance their relationship or how to kindle that fire, never having witnessed love in the first place to even know how to show it. So instead they tiptoed around their feelings and focused on their work.
Pein wanted both to develop their abilities before they would be allowed to go on missions. However, out of the two, it was Moriko that needed the most training. While she would preach about getting things done without force, she was a force to be reckoned with in battle. She fought dirty and wasn't above killing innocent civilians to complete her missions.
So at sixteen, Moriko stood in the palm of the large hands, listening to Pein explain their mission. Three years. That was all the time they had. What would those three years have in store for them? Who would die and who would live? It was a terrifying thought to have, but it was one that had kept her up at night.
"Hey, Sasori-nii, why don't you come out of that puppet?" Moriko pushed her intrusive thoughts of death and demise out of her head and lounged on top of her partners hunched back, "I'm telling ya, feeling the sun on your skin is the best."
Deidara glanced at the redhead. "He's a puppet remember, hm. He doesn't have skin."
"You're from the Village Hidden in Moonlight, right?" Was the puppet masters response. "So while you enjoy the sunlight, others might not."
Moriko frowned and folded her arms behind her head, ignoring the surprised look Deidara shot her way.
"Really? Wasn't that the village that the Leaf destroyed years ago, yeah?" His tone was even, cool, and collected. But there was a lot that made sense now.
Up until a year ago, Moriko always wore that stupid pink and green kimono. Then one day she traded it in for a black crop top and baggy black pants with the akatsuki pattern on it. With more skin exposed, her scars became more noticeable. They were deep and ugly looking, marring her white flesh. When he first saw them something inside Deidara hurt.
It bugged him that he had never known about those scars before. It angered him that someone had done that to Moriko and hadn't paid the price. Yet, now, as he glanced down at the lounging redhead, who was busy conversing with their partner, he realized he'd never known how she'd got those scars.
"It wasn't a myth," he'd heard her say when he left his thoughts. "We really weren't allowed outside during the day. I'm telling ya, it was a crime punishable by death."
"Is that how you got those scars, un?" He'd hated himself the second those words left his lips. Hated the way confusion and pain crossed her fair complexion at his innocent, yet loaded, question.
"No," her voice was tiny as she traced the largest scar on her body. It raced down her right shoulder, between her breasts, ending at her left hip. "I was there when the village was destroyed. I just wouldn't die, apparently."
Her smile was small and broken. Deidara looked away, keeping his mouth shut for the time being. He was never the best when it came to girls. Sure one of his old teammates was a girl, but even then his interactions with her were strictly business. Everyone in the Akatsuki were male save for Konan and Moriko. It was one big sausage fest, as Hidan would say.
Damn, no wonder he was still a virgin, talking to girls about emotional things was hard.
By dusk they had arrived at a small village and checked into an inn for the night. They shared a room, as they always did, though this time Moriko accompanied them. It was usually Deidara and Sasori, but now that she was allowed on missions, they had to squeeze together into one room. Which was fine… if you were Sasori, an unfeeling, unemotional puppet. Not a hot-blooded teenage male.
While Sasori had secluded himself in the corner, content to sleep in his hunched puppet, Deidara was left to his own devices with the pretty redhead. He tried working on some new clay figures, but his eyes kept wondering over to Moriko's pale, shapely legs as she sat on the windowsill drying her hair. Her shorts left everything and nothing to his imagination.
Math equations and old ladies weren't enough to keep himself in check. Was it hot in there? Maybe he should take his cloak off… oh, he already had. Deidara scratched the back of his head and grumbled to himself.
Moriko sensed the male's distress from where she sat on the windowsill. His heart thumped away in his chest so loudly that it was bringing to give her a headache. Testing her theory, she raised her leg stretching it along the length of the window. The males heartbeat sped up, hammering wildly against his ribs. Oh, she was enjoying this. He was too busy waging a war within himself to notice Moriko slip off the window sill and sit beside him
Carefully she stepped down off the windowsill and perched quietly next to him and blew lightly in his ear. Deidara visibly flinched, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He tried his best to make it look as though her closeness to him was nothing short of normal, but the way her chest brushed against his arm when she breathed was making it hard for him to focus.
"Are you okay?" She asked, peering at him with her crystal eyes. "Y'know you're getting kind red. Do you have a fever?"
He grabbed her wrist before her hand could make contact with his forehead. This was so embarrassing, her seeing him like this. He really needed to leave and cool down before things got out of hand. Maybe a cold shower… but there she was again, staring into his eyes like she could read him like a book. And maybe she could. After all her special jutsu was… Jashin, could she hear his heartbeat?
"I'm fine, un." He pushed her hand away roughly.
Moriko blew air out her lips and sat heavily beside him, propping her arms behind her. "Alright, if you say so."
The silence between them hung in the air like a thick smog. Deidara's cheeks became a tinted pink while he tried to keep his racing heartbeat in check. Frustrated and fed up with the closeness of the redhead, Deidara growled and squished the clay animal he had been working on for the past hour in his fists. Moriko could have sworn she saw steam come out of his nostrils and ears.
"Is it hard?" She giggled, leaning forward to glance at the squashed masterpiece in his hands.
"W-what?" The blond shuffled away from her, startled at her question. "I-I-I-I m-mean maybe a little b-but I can-"
Moriko's face became blank as she pointed down at the white clay. "I meant sculpting, y'know."
Deidara wanted nothing more than for the floor to swallow him whole. He quickly laughed nervously and scratched the back of his head, ignoring the fact that bits of the soft earth were clinging to his long hair. He was such an idiot, of course she meant sculpting and not…
"Can I try? I might not be good at it but I wanna try, I'm telling ya." Moriko smiled, nice enough to overlook his embarrassing mistake.
"Sure, hm." Deidara handed the girl a wad of clay and watched as she kneeled it in her small hands.
It made his stomach do little flips as she admired his work and tried to copy it with the tiny bit of clay she had. Since their first meeting she had always adored his art, her smile wide and happy at the explosions his clay creations created. There wasn't a time when he didn't pick up a wad of clay and remember how she had eaten it upon their first meeting.
"I'm telling ya, I only ate it to get his chakra so I could follow him!" She'd said when Konan scolded her for eating inedible objects… again. "But his chakra tasted like rain water so I couldn't help myself!"
Though, when he turned to Moriko again, his smile turned into a frown the flip in his stomach turned into a rock and sank into his shoes. The redhead had just tossed the ball of white clay into her mouth and began to chew. Unable to form the right words for a question, he just watched wordlessly as she spat it back into her palm and began to mold it again.
"There!" Moriko put her firsts on her hips and admired the soggy looking butterfly resting on the hardwood floor.
Deidara sighed. "That's not how-"
"Katsu!"
The redhead laughed to herself when the spit-soaked sculpture failed to explode. Deidara knocked his knuckled on the top of her head, haunting her giggles.
"Idiot, hm."
"Yeah, but-" Moriko leant in close and pressed the tip of her index finger into his cheek. "I got you to relax, y'know."
Deidara batted her finger away, blushing wildly. "I am relaxed, hm!"
The redhead shot him a deadpan look and pointed to his pants. "Sure and that's why your heart rate was thundering like a set of wild horses, y'know."
Another voice knocked them out of their own world and back to reality, where they were still on a mission, staying at a local inn. Where their other teammate was sitting in the corner of the room, obviously watching them with a bored expression.
"I suggest the two of you get some sleep before the mission tomorrow." Sasori's voice sounded from the puppet he used to travel in.
The pair of teenagers jumped at the sound of his voice, each moving to the opposite side of the room. The elder merely sighed at their youthfulness and smiled sadly to himself.
A/N: Thank you to the reviewer that corrected my spelling on Kasime. I'm never the best at spelling, oops. Please review and follow and favorite! If you have nothing nice to say say nothing at all! That's my motto!