Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Chapter VIII: The Art of Comprehension
It's been over five days and Deidara and Sasori were not getting along at all. Deidara was sore for his partner not listening to him when he said the kiss was initiated by Hikari, and Sasori was pissed at Deidara because he thought he had acted it out on horny male impulse. They stopped interacting with each other; no making art together, no arguing about it, no idle conversations about how fucked some of the members were. Zit. Nada. When they did happen to bump into each other, they would just exchange glares and walk off.
"The hell has gotten into those bastards?" Hidan grumbled, figuring something was up by the fourth day of them acting that way. Kakuzu gave a shrug as he counted a stack of money.
"I don't know, and I don't give a damn either." The Jashinist rolled his eyes and began to think up what could possibly be wrong with those two.
'Can't be about that fucking art shit; they argue everyday about it it's like fucking child play to them.' He rubbed his chin. This was nagging him to no end; Hidan didn't like being left out on things, that way he couldn't do his gossip or make any fun of the situation like he usually did. He stopped his train of thought as Deidara walked into the kitchen, feeling thirsty for some drink.
'Well, I better give it a try.' Thought the religious man as he got up and walked over to the blond.
"Hey bitch, what the fuck's up with you and your redhead partner?" He bluntly asked. Just the mention of Sasori made Deidara flinch and glare.
"None of your business. Leave me the hell alone, hm." He replied while getting a carton of milk out of the fridge. Hidan grunted.
"Oh come on! Tell me what happened, something must've cuz you two ain't arguing about your shitty art like usual." Dei's visible eye twitched and he shut the fridge door, rather forcefully.
"Shut up Hidan! Goddamnit, why do you always have to butt into people's business, un? It's annoying." He said before he marched out of there. Blinking, the gray haired man shrugged before noticing the carton of milk on the counter. He stared at it, then opened the lid, and drank right out of it.
"Hikari-chan, let's play a game!" Tobi said as he skipped over to her. She looked up from a book she was reading.
"I don't feel like playing right now Tobi-chan…" She mumbled. That made the orange masked boy groan and start to whine.
"'Kari-chaaaannn please play with meeeee~!" Hikari pouted, as his boyish voice did not allow for her to concentrate on her reading. Tobi stopped his annoying moans to look down at what the book she had.
"Wha'cha reading?" He asked, turning his head around over to the title on the cover. It read 'The Mysteries of Erotica.'
"Eh? Why you reading a book on sex Hikari-chan?" She gave him a small shrug.
"I found it in mommy's room so I thought I'd read it." Was her reply. Tobi blinked, but she obviously couldn't have seen that. Konan had an erotic book? Odd. Then again…
"Hikari." Someone called her name. Hikari looked over to see Sasori walking up to them.
"I need to have a chat with-"He paused and looked at the book.
"What is that?"
"It's a book Sasori-senpai! Haven't you seen one before?" Tobi questioned, earning a glare from the puppeteer.
"Shut up Tobi. Where did you get it at?" Hikari told him what she told a minute ago. Sasori sighed and shook his head.
'Honestly, Konan should keep those things in some hidden place or something.' He thought.
"Well, I still need to talk to you, in private that is." He said, stressing the word while glancing sideways to Tobi. The hyper member saluted him before heading off to do whatever. Sasori then sat down next to Hikari on her bed.
"Listen, I want you to tell me what happened a few days ago with you and Deidara." He started off. The black haired woman blinked, but nodded all the same.
"Okay, what about it?" It took a moment for Sasori to form the question right.
"When I saw you two kiss…who was it that initiated it? Was it him?" To that she shook her head.
"No Saso-chan, I kissed him." His eyes widened a slight bit, but he knew that that might've been possible. However, the fact that she confirmed it made him feel stupid for not listening to his partner in the first place.
"But why? Why did you do that?" She tapped her chin as she thought on the reason behind it.
"Hmm…well I think it was because of all that love talk I got from Itachi-chan. You know you love someone when you can't live without them and stuff like that right? So, I feel that way about everyone, and since Dei-chan was there, I was trying to show it to him." She explained. Sasori blankly stared at her.
'Itachi, you clearly didn't do a fabulous job at clearing everything up. Damn Uchiha.' He thought before sighing.
"Listen, that's not how it works. There are different types of love one person can feel." He told her, but he felt quite odd doing it. He was a puppet with a beating heart, but not as if he could feel anything. He remembered a little about his love for his parents and grandmother, but it was soon replaced by simple memories when he decided to transform himself. So, giving Hikari a lecture about love seemed rather farfetched and stupid to him, but he just had to give it a try.
"What other types are there?" She asked, bringing him back to the conversation.
"Well, there's family love, in which you usually share with your parents and other relatives. There's no sexual involvement in that." He added in the end, just to be safe. The girl nodded her head.
"Then, there's friendly love, something you would probably have for your friends." Sasori continued, always earning a nod of understanding from her.
"And finally, there's intimate love, which you probably confused it with the friendly one when you decided to kiss Deidara." He said, slightly grumbling in the end. It still was a shock for him every time he thought about the scene he walked in on a couple of days ago.
"How does intimate love work?" She asked, catching him off guard. Now, how the hell was he supposed to explain that to her without giving her any incentive?
"Erm…intimate love is like, you have the desire to spend time with that one special person, and you want to do things you wouldn't do in the other types of love I've mentioned…such as sex…" He muttered quietly in the end. Hikari stared at him.
"So…how do I know if I have that intimate kind of love?" The puppeteer wanted to smack himself. Of course she was going to keep asking about it!
"I don't really know since I've never been in love like that. But really Hikari, you shouldn't worry about that right now. You're still young and…well let's just leave it at that." She pouted a little, but didn't push the matter since she knew he could get temperamental if annoyed.
"So, did that clear things up a bit for you?"
"Yeah, I think so. Thanks Saso-chan." She smiled. He almost smiled back before leaving her room. Now that he set that straight, he had to go do something he hated doing, and that was apologizing to a certain blond partner.
Deidara was sulking in his bed, staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom.
'Stupid Hidan. Can't give anybody any peace. Hm.' He turned over his stomach and let his mind drift off to the kiss Hikari had given him. It had come as a total shock for him, but he couldn't deny the fact that he had enjoyed it.
'Ugh, you're sick Deidara, thinking of her like that. God she was just a baby a few months ago, un!' He thought, lightly bonking his head and sighing.
'I guess I kind of did deserve being scolded and almost killed by Sasori-dana. I mean, if I felt that way about the kiss, then hell I might be just like Hidan.' He sweatdropped, greatly disliking the thought of having anything in common with that crazy Jashinist. He was brought back to reality when a knock came to his door.
"Hold on, un." He said before getting up, and heading over to it. When he opened up, he instantly glared. Sasori stared at him, but did not glare back, and that made him drop his.
"What do you want, hm?" He asked with a tone of being irritated. Sasori grunted and pushed past him and into the room. Deidara blinked before grumbling some things under his breath and closing the door.
"What makes you think you can just come in like that, hm?" He asked, crossing his arms and narrowing his eyes at the readhead. Sasori merely glanced over to his clay sculptures before turning to the blond.
"I talked things out with Hikari and…you were right." The blond raised an eyebrow. Could it be? Was Sasori admitting that he was wrong? For the first time ever?
"Oh did you now? I've been telling you all along dana, but you wouldn't listen, un!" He said, acting offended still.
"Don't be a drama-queen," Sasori grunted. "You can't blame me for thinking the way I did when I walked in on that. I mean, Hikari's innocent and doesn't know much about relationships and crap like that." Deidara uncrossed his arms and sighed. That was true.
"Yeah I guess…but still you didn't have to chase me around the entire goddamn hideout trying to kill me for it." His partner shrugged at that.
"I wasn't really going to kill you…just hurt you badly." The blond rolled his eyes.
"Yeah ok, well at least you can stop giving me death glares and all that now, right?" He nodded as he already started heading towards the door.
"Right, and I'll go back to trying to make you realize that your view in art is wrong while mine is right, as normal." The blond scoffed at that.
"Yeah right, keep dreaming! My art is much better than yours, hm!"
"As if, brat." Was Sasori's reply before he left the room. Deidara grumbled and took a seat on his bed, a smirk almost crossing his face.
'So things are back to normal, thank god, hm.'
Unknown to him, walls sometimes had ears, and sometimes they had someone that could morph through them to eavesdrop on people. Zetsu smirked to himself after hearing the two's conversation.
'It'll be interesting to see what Pein does after we tell him this piece of info.' The black side commented telepathically to his other half.
'I have a feeling he won't react well to this.' The white side said, before they morphed away.
The following morning, Deidara and Sasori were back to normal in relationship-wise, and Hidan was dying of curiosity still, as he had not figured out what the hell set them off in the first place; and now they're back to being buddy-buddies? What the hell was up with that?
"Damnit, I should have a fucking pupil to figure shit out for me." He mumbled as he ate some crappy oatmeal. The blond and redhead were in a mild dispute about whose view on art was better, which was of course normal for them. Hikari would look back and forth between the two as they traded insults on their abilities.
'I don't get it. Art sounds complicated.' She thought, shaking her head and eating some grapes from her plate. The only other people at the table were Konan, Tobi and Kikuyu, since Kismet and Itachi were given a mission to do yesterday. Konan usually ignored everyone, but the glee of having Hikari around was that she could have girl-talk, or 'mother to daughter' chats to occupy her. Having been the only woman in the organization prior to the black haired girl made life as boring and tedious as it got when living under the same roof with a bunch of men. It was especially irritating in those times of the month. As the two women engaged in a conversation about cats, Pein walked in, but he looked rather serious. That was usually a sign that he meant business.
"Sasori and Deidara, I need to have a word with you two…in my office." He said, straight to the point before he turned and left. The two artists had stopped arguing and looked at one another. Had they done something wrong?
'I didn't like the tone of his voice.' Sasori thought. Deidara didn't really think much of it, figuring it might be something about a mission or anything of that sort. Meanwhile, Hidan was getting excited again as he smirked a little.
'This is my chance to fucking find something out around here. I'm bored as hell with not having any news to bullshit about.'
"Pooh, Deidara-senpai and Sasori-senpai are in trouubleeee~" Tobi sang out. Deidara glared and threw a piece of bread at him.
"Ack!" Tobi fell off his chair when he was hit, powerfully so, square in the mask. Dei huffed and ignored Kakuzu's subtle complaints about wasting food. Sasori almost had the same idea, but he kept himself level-headed as he preoccupied himself with thinking what Pein might want with them.
'As far as I know, we've done our missions well up to now. Did something happen?' He wondered before standing up. Deidara followed suit and they both headed off to Pein's office.
Once they got there, they were asked to approach his desk as he stared at them intently with his rinnegan eyes.
"I've been told that you, Deidara, had a moment with Hikari in which you two kissed. Is that right?" He asked, but it sounded more like a demand. Deidara gulped a bit; who the hell ratted him out?
"Uh, yes sir—but it was an accident un!" He said instantly. He didn't seem to buy that though and Sasori shook his head.
"Let me make this clear to you both, since I also know that you've been giving her some odd ideas about love and what not, Sasori." The leader said to the redhead, before proceeding on.
"I don't want to hear any talk about relationships, love, or anything of that sort. I especially want Hikari to be ignorant of such things because the last thing I want is a fatal mishap in this organization. Is that understood?" Both nodded their heads to that, before they were dismissed.
"Who the hell told on us, hm?" Deidara was really hating that person right now. Sasori thought for a moment before looking ahead.
"It was probably Zetsu. He's the one who usually reports things to Pein." Deidara turned his hands into fists.
"That green black and white faced bastard! He's weird enough the way he is, but to tell on us like that, what an ass!" As Deidara complained, Sasori couldn't help but wonder about what Pein said. So he didn't want Hikari too close to anyone; was he concerned about her physical performance in the trainings she's been having with the members thus far? Or did he have other plans for the girl? Whatever the reason, he did not have a good vibe about it.