A/N: So I actually managed to get all three of these chapters written up tonight. I'm amazed! I don't normally get things written so quickly.
People are bastards. That's something that Deidara has learnt, time and time again. There isn't a reason to it, no cause or action or excuse. It just is.
And bastards, the blond knows, tend to move in packs. They also tend to fill the halls in school, no matter the grade or location - and, God, is it really that close to the end of winter?
Deidara's calender says it is.
The top half shows off a sleek, black car. It looks sort of like the one that brought him here, to Konan's, but he doesn't know cars well. That means that he's probably wrong and, Hell, it's not like he's paying much attention to the top half, anyway.
No, his eye is locked on the bottom page. The one that lists the month and the days of the week, and a lot of them are crossed off at this point. Each one with a bright purple "X" right in the middle of the box. There's a red circle around the twentieth, which is only three days away.
"Back to the wolves, yeah." he mutters to himself, face twisting into an angry scowl. Then he's suddenly not thinking and he's just moving and ripping the offending group of pages off of the wall.
-x-x-x-
Her house smells of smoke. That's the first thing that Konan notices when she walks inside - and she supposes that it's about time something like this has happened. Then she hopes that Deidara hasn't set anything important on fire.
Letting out a heavy sigh through her noise, Konan closes the front door behind her and sits the bag of groceries down beside it. Then she follows the acrid odor of something burning and starts moving up, up, up the stairs and onto the third floor.
Here, she can actually see the smoke. Thin whisps of grey that trail along her ceiling, coiling about the antique looking light fixtures and just out of reach of her smoke alarms. As expected, it's coming from the fourth door from the stairwell, on the left.
Deidara's room.
For a moment, she stands outside of the door. Then her lips tug into a frown and she all but marches down the hall, moving to stand in the entrance of her first charge's room. Deidara's perched on the edge of his bed, bare feet resting on the metal rung that supports the mattress, hands clutching the sheets so hard that the knuckles have begun to turn white. His head is tilted to the side slightly, blond hair framing his face in a way that belies innocence, not destruction. His sharp, blue eye is focused on the trash bin in front of him.
Rather, it's focused on the flames sparking within its metal confines.
They are twining together, all red and heat and disaster in the making, twisting in a dance that is so beyond anyone's control. And there's a spark in Deidara's eye that isn't usually there, as he watches the all-consuming fire devour the calender. With it, his worries are also consumed, if only for a few moments.
In the doorway, Konan crosses her arms over her chest. Clears her throat. And doesn't get a single response, not even a glance. He's too focused on the fire that is now licking at the edge of the basket, too focused on the fact that everything he feels is in there and being burnt to a crisp, and God damn, it felt good to watch it burn!
"Deidara." snapped Konan, and the teen was suddenly jerking his head to look at her, eye wide in surprise. And the light was gone now, replaced with confusion, then with horror.
He shifts, and one hand reaches for the trash can in front of him, almost like he isn't thinking. Konan, personally, doesn't see what it is that he could be planning on doing with it. she doesn't stay to find out, either.
As she leaves, she tosses a terse, "open the window, before my house starts to stink", and then she closes the door behind her.
-x-x-x-
Later that day, Konan calls him down to the living room. Deidara isn't entirely sure what to expect, a threat maybe, or possibly just a packed suit-case and the time of when a car will be there to pick him up. He isn't expecting Konan to be sitting on the couch, a mug of something hot and slightly bitter smelling clasped in her hands.
"Uh, yeah?" asks Deidara, hesitating at the edge of the room.
Konan looks up at him and raises an eyebrow. Then she lays down the rules of the house, as they apply to Deidara.
Her house is not to smell of smoke, for any reason.
What he burns, he buys. If he doesn't buy it, then he pays for it afterwards.
She expects some common sense to be used. If her house is burnt down, she tells him, she's going to know who to blame. She's also going to know who to bill - and the fact that he has no money and no job doesn't matter to her.
Then she tells him that he can go, and waves a hand; and, damn, if that doesn't confuse Deidara all the more.
-x-x-x-
Konan makes breakfast the next morning, just like she always does. That morning she's made a batch of pancakes, and they are already spread out on the table when Deidara meanders downstairs sometime around nine.
Something else that sets this new house apart from his old ones, he notes, is that almost everything is home-cooked. Even if it isn't, if it's ordered in or just frozen pizza, it's always eaten at the table, together.
They don't pray before they eat, so as soon as Deidara takes a seat, a starts loading up his plate. Three pancakes and a large pile of butter later, he finally manages to mutter out a good morning.
"Good morning to you too, Deidara." says Konan, offering him a slight smile over her coffee.
They don't speak after that until the very end, when the host-mother forces Deidara to help load everything into the dish washer and put the left-overs in the fridge. Then Konan pulls a crumpled bill out of her jeans and shoves it at the blond.
"What's this for?" asks Deidara, surprised. He fumbles for the folded up money, stretching it out and gaping at it once he gets it in both hands. "Why'm I getting a fifty?"
"School starts in two days." answers Konan, voice firm and unwavering. "You still need to get your supplies."
"But-" Deidara starts, but a slight frown forms on the older womans face and that, he decides, isn't a good thing.
So he turns on his heel and slips out of the house.