Countdown to Valentine's Day: 2 Days

"We haven't had a mission in days, un," Deidara pouted like a boy and squished a small bit of clay between his forefinger and thumb. "And Kakuzu and Hidan get two in a week,"

Sasori wasn't really listening. He was trying to busy himself with the knick-knacks—namely loose parts of his puppet creations—that were scattered in so many places around his room. He didn't know when he'd become such a slacker, and he actually wanted to know, so he could go back and ask himself what the hell he was thinking. Sasori picked up an empty powder bottle and dumped it into the cardboard box he had under his arm.

Deidara was sitting cross-legged on the bed, looking mighty bored with the situation at hand. It's true, Sasori thought in agreement. The most eventful thing we have done in the past week is this clean up I'm doing.

"This bites,"

"Well…," Sasori began. He knew it was immature, but he was kind of getting tired of hearing that Jashinist's name come out from between Deidara's lips.

That's the fifth time from breakfast until now, he thought, a teensy bit distraught. He wondered if Deidara ever mentioned him this much around anyone else. And, because Sasori was in love, and like anyone in the midst of loving someone whose feelings for you were unknown, he was being pessimistic and overanalyzing everything. Thusly, Sasori immediately doubted that Deidara would ever mention his name around someone else. Say, Hidan.

"…Kakuzu and Hidan's job is to keep the money coming in. Those heads in our refrigerator are practically our currency. We do not have a clear responsibility in this organization, and, thus, we don't really have Pein breathing down our necks all the time,"

Sasori took a breath. "You should be grateful,"

Grateful that we can spend more time…just relaxing, like this, he wanted so much to add. The cardboard box full, Sasori put it down and got another one. This sudden wave of love was all very nauseating, considering it had happened abruptly and completely overnight. It hadn't even loomed up on him first, giving him a chance to blush when Deidara's hand touched his, or even stay up all night thinking about whether or not Deidara liked him back. Because for sure, Deidara liked Sasori, but just probably not in the way Sasori would currently have liked. Or loved. Oh, what did it matter—did I inhale something weird in my sleep?

Sasori glanced at his partner, his fellow artist, someone who had been around him for so long, and who Sasori had appreciated so little. Well, for most of the time. This was, after all, their fourth year together.

Deidara grunted his response. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and watched Sasori.

"Do you need any help?"

Sasori shuffled around for a bit longer, purposefully ignoring Deidara's question, trying to retain his normal self. Actually, his normal self would be good, because then he would walk over to Deidara on cue and make the Iwa nin's lips sore because they had been kissing too much.

Deidara ignored the fact that Sasori was ignoring him and picked up a canister that was near his feet, almost under the bed. It was made of clear purple glass, and had an "X" mark on it. It seemed very old, because its surface was very scratched and worn and had obviously lost most of its previous vibrancy. He slid off the bed and walked over to Sasori, who was in his storage room.

"Here,"

Sasori resisted the urge to turn around in order to accept whatever Deidara had picked up for him. Normally, the other Akatsuki members used the extra room for working, but both he and Deidara used it for storage. In Sasori's case, it was for the storage of poisons, balms, ointments, concoctions and oils to keep his puppets well-maintained, well-equipped and presentable. Some of them contained simple compounds for Sasori play with and experiment, while some of the other pots that sat on the higher shelves could blind someone if they so much as touched it. Sasori liked to think of his little room as a sort of apothecary. Anyway, the point was, the fact that it was full of shelves made the space much smaller than it really was, and so Deidara was painfully close to Sasori, so that he didn't knock any of the stuff off the shelves. Normally—that is, before they started their whole friends-with-benefits relationship—Sasori would have been damned before he let Deidara set foot in here, but…

Screw it. Sasori fully intended to confess to Deidara he wanted to be more than just sex buddies at some point, and since Valentine's Day was conveniently nigh, Sasori decided he should make quick work of it and get it over and done with. The puppeteer had been bubbling with ideas and propositions ever since he and Deidara had left the breakfast table, during which Sasori had gone into a small inner-tantrum about Deidara's whole Hidan thing.

You're blowing it out of proportion, he told himself. Deidara doesn't like that type.

He turned around and almost jumped back at just how close Deidara was to him. Sure, it was nowhere near as close as they were on those steamy nights when they spent the night at each other's rooms, but there was something different about this. To Sasori at least, the closeness was more intimate than sexual. Sex could be intimate, but one wouldn't really think of it as intimate when you were having a one night stand. Or being a booty call, Sasori thought miserably. He took the bottle from Deidara's hands—letting their fingers touch in what he hoped was a casual way—and put it in the box he was holding. Dammit. Deidara was still standing there, like Sasori didn't have a big fucking crush on him and wanted to hide every time he saw him now.

Oh, wait. He actually doesn't know…well, yet, Sasori thought.

Sasori looked at the tip of Deidara's little nose, an easy job considering he was the taller guy, and noticed a smear of clay on it, still wondering how this transition came so quickly and so suddenly. Maybe it was the puppet gesture he'd woken up to this morning: the fact that Deidara had done that deliberately so he wouldn't wake Sasori up probably woke Sasori up in turn, opening up a little door inside him and screaming this one's a keeper!

Deidara was oblivious, scanning Sasori's storage room with interest. He'd hardly been in here ever before—he remembered when he'd just turned fifteen and, oddly enough, Pein had given him the whole speech about how it had been a year since Deidara was here, and that he should really grow up, grow some balls and be a man. Well, he didn't say those exact words, but Deidara was sure that was what he meant. Sasori had probably overheard, because he decided to let Deidara go into his special little room and have a look around. In the end, he gave Deidara a little container that actually had something in it. Deidara, of course, played it cool and didn't open it until he got back to his own room. After all, he'd been trying to earn the respect of his danna for ages, and he guessed this was kind of a mark of respect, giving birthday gifts and all. There was a high chance that the container was full of something stupid, but Deidara knew Sasori wasn't really the joking type. It turned out the container held something that Sasori used in his puppets when he wanted some BOOM to his battles. That is, there were tiny little explosive beads all packed tightly together in the little vessel. Deidara smiled at the memory. His still-naïve fifteen year old self couldn't bring himself to use too much, but was still able to impress Sasori to some degree by filling his explosive clay with a few of them.

Actually, I still have that container, Deidara thought. He walked out from between the two shelves where Sasori was and looked at the others.