A/N:
There's one thing I want to make clear before you read. The character that appears in this chapter, Kanyu, is actually a half-OC character who comes from the novel Akatsuki Hiden. I use her name, her backstory, and the story of her meeting Deidara and Sasori, but her personality is 100% my interpretation.
If you want to know more about her, you can check out the novel, but even if you don't, you'll still be able to understand the story just well. You only need to know that she's a potter from a village called Ceramic Village and her dream is to revive an ancient form of pottery called Hanasaki. She is also acquaintances with Deidara and Sasori as the two of them help her destroy the village that holds her back.
The reason I chose Kanyu over a pre-existing canon character is that no one in canon can replace her role, and she fits perfectly as Deidara and Sasori's friends. Likewise, this fic will include a lot of other OCs so I hope you're fine with it.
Anyway, enjoy this long and light-hearted chapter before we jump into some action!
Chapter 2: Japanese Has Three Alphabets
Kanyu was, arguably, the only person Deidara considered a friend.
Labels carried little weight when you led a life of a missing-nin, a life where people faded in and faded out like a firefly's flickering existence. There were always the odds. Making non-Akatsuki acquaintance meant taking chances, treading shallow water, being constantly restless, constantly on the lookout for any indications of a spy. They mustn't gamble their lives upon such risks—Sasori had hammered the fact into Deidara's mind lots of times. Deidara had compromised. After all, Iwa must have put a bounty on his head, and those Kiri hunter-nin lurked in the shadows.
Still, in certain instances, when the sun turned blood-red and wisps of clouds eclipsed the break of day, when the air simmered and the trees basked in the residual heat of his creations, Deidara had longed for someone to share the glory. A like-minded artist, someone other than Sasori with his shitty taste. Someone other than a shinobi, really, outside of all the battles and bloodlust and ninja shenanigans.
The day she came, the walls of Deidara's daydream were torn. She ripped through the confinement of his mind and stepped into his life two years ago, in one of his and Sasori's trips to the Ceramic Village. Located near a former stream bed, the village had an abundant clay supply Deidara often stole from. There they came across her—a potter with a passionate heart, an intelligent mind, and skillful hands. She had the right portion of craziness to make her interesting and a perfect dose of ignorance to guarantee her harmless.
"Remind me why you're here?" Deidara pressed the map against the nape of the clay bird's neck. "I thought you hated my company."
"I want to experiment with new material. The clay there can be useful," Sasori said in Hiruko's gravelly voice.
"Some qualities of Hanasaki clay are great for puppets, yeah? Fire resistance, electrical resistance." Deidara exerted more pressure in his grip to secure the map in place, sheltering it from the yanks of the wind. Then, hearing no response from Sasori, he added: "Ironic, isn't it? Your puppets and my explosions, made from the same material."
"Trees."
"Look, I know you take pride in your repertoire of one-word replies," Deidara clicked his tongue. "But you're making no damn sense."
There was a shuffling sound behind Deidara's back. Then it erupted into a commotion of snapping joints and clacking metal like the moans of a malfunctioned machine. Deidara tensed up, preparing himself for a deadly strike from Hiruko, but it never came.
They lapsed into silence.
"Toilet paper and fine art paper are both made from trees. One makes canvases for drawings, paintings, vessels of significant historical documents and records that transcend time and space," Sasori said matter-of-factly. "One you use to wipe your ass."
Deidara snorted. "That's a good one."
"I know."
Wiping a smile off his lips, Deidara turned back to the work at hand: navigating her location. His gaze darted from place to place, tracing the lines that enclosed the multi-colored shapes of sprawling continents. The wind had loosened its grip on his map. Like a girl in her lover's presence, she mellowed as hints of sunset kissed the horizon.
Deidara had miscalculated. With the great distance bridging Kusagakure and their destination, it would take at least three days, including night breaks, to arrive.
"I know I can't trust you with directions," Sasori grunted as the clay bird skimmed along a soft curve. "Turn around. The Ceramic Village's behind us."
"We destroyed it, remember?"
"Oh."
"Scatterbrain," Deidara said, immediately following his insult with more information to deflect Sasori's imminent remark. "Anyway, I ran into Kanyu the other day. Girl's moved to somewhere in Lightning, apparently—Valley of Lies, yeah, something like that."
"You meet up with her often," Sasori commented.
"The clay there is out of this world," Deidara shrugged. "I need more of that goodness. Visiting Kanyu is just a by-product."
"But you two seem close," Sasori insisted. "Remember the first time we stayed over at her place? You were talking to her in your boxers."
"Shit, you saw that?"
"I heard that. You were loud."
"It's not my fault I was in the mood for some late-night art discussion," Deidara said as he folded the map into a neat square and slid it into his cloak's pocket, turning around to face Sasori. "And I happen to like sleeping in my boxers."
Hiruko's eyes narrowed. "I won't be surprised if your relationship turns into, let's say, something else."
"No. We're not like that." Deidara leveled a dead stare.
Then he spent three days explaining to Sasori why there was no way, in any alternate timeline or universe, he and Kanyu could be a couple, presenting every piece of evidence at his disposal (excluding the fact that Deidara had a thing for Sasori, of course). During that time span, one thought kept appearing in Deidara's mind.
His partner was so, so painfully oblivious.
By the time Deidara finished proving to Sasori that he and Kanyu would still not end up together in a timeline where they were the last two dinosaurs to survive the meteor crash, the Land of Lightning had welcomed them into her embrace with chilly coastal air and a cloudless blue sky.
"Reproduction is hard-wired in all living organisms," Sasori said, irritation lending his voice extra roughness. "How can a man and a woman not get together when it's the fucking end of the world and they're the only ones left?"
Deidara rubbed his eyes, which were puffy due to nights of sleeplessness. "Because I like guys."
Sasori went dead silent.
As Deidara and Sasori made a detour to avoid Kumogakure, the Valley of Lies unfurled between ranges of mountains. It was a small area, cramped between mountain walls and dotted by kilns with fire blaring in their mouths. Deidara hopped down from the clay bird as soon as it landed. The muddy ground swallowed the soles of his sandals, making him stumble, but he regained his balance in time.
Deidara took a few seconds to soak in the ambiance. The sight of ceramic and kilns stirred up distant memories from his pre-enlightenment days, while echoes of roaring fire and popping explosions embellished those humdrum parts of his life with charming finishing touches. Kanyu was among the chaos like she had always been. She was crouching in front of an open kiln, long brown hair tied into a messy ponytail draping over her shoulder. Deidara, the self-proclaimed stealth master, crept towards her.
"Need some help with that?" Deidara stood behind Kanyu, grinning.
"Nice try, Deidara," Kanyu replied without turning around. "And Sasori. Hey, long time."
Surprise swept over Deidara's face when he turned aside and found an out-of-Hiruko Sasori next to Kanyu. He amused himself with a new realization: they trusted Kanyu enough to confide their identities in her, partly because she was their friend, mostly because she didn't give a fuck.
"Why do I hear explosions?" It was a very Sasori kind of way to communicate by skipping the small talk and delving straight into the discussion. "Are you trying to mess with me or blow up your works?"
"Both?" Kanyu smiled.
She said nothing more, letting the sight before them be her answer. It was a very Deidara kind of way to invade people's personal space by squeezing himself between Sasori and Kanyu instead of taking the place on Kanyu's unoccupied left. Together, the three of them peered into the firing chamber.
Five white ceramic vases were stacked in the kiln, a traditional model with a brick hover, a fueling area stockpiled with burning logs, and a chimney stack poking out from the back, balls of smoke rolling out from its opening. The crisp snip-snap-whoosh of the fire crackled and snapped. It breathed life into the infantile clayware, breathed art into their plain figures. The vases were being fired at an alarming rate. Knowing the miracle that would come next, Deidara couldn't help but reach out.
Sasori extended his arm before Deidara's chest, pushing him backward.
"It won't hurt you, I swear." Kanyu broke into laughter. "Don't be such a scaredy-cat, Sasori."
Cracking sounds of ceramic brought Kanyu's laugh to a halt. The flame swirled and swirled in a dizziness-inducing pace, faster and faster until Deidara's eyes failed to follow. Then magic happened: small explosions flared off and rattled the kiln.
"It's a special firing technique using explosions," Kanyu explained to Sasori. "You fire clay very fast, limit the fuel and thus limit the severity of the explosions, and ta-dah—nice cracks patterns. I've done my fair share of experiments, and this turned out to be the best way to make Hanasaki-style pottery."
"Do you realize how risky that is? One mistake and you'd get burnt," Sasori said, growing visibly disgusted. "Or dead, if that's what you prefer."
Kanyu turned up to look at Deidara, who cracked a knowing smile and muttered "I know" before jumping to her defense. "Don't be so rude. We were the ones who helped her discover the secret to her art."
"I didn't think that secret was going to be explosions."
"Life is full of the unexpected," Deidara said as he leaned against the kiln's wall. "You never thought of helping someone by burning down their village, yeah? But here we are."
"He's right. I'm really thankful for that," Kanyu replied, and Sasori's expression became less clouded at this verbalization of gratitude.
"I couldn't stand seeing an artist not reaching her full potential because of her village." Deidara made a valiant effort to hide his clenching fists under his arms. "A village that values profit over art doesn't deserve to live anyway."
A silent nod was shared between the Artist Trio.
It was a crazy coincidence, the three of them ever crossing paths. Three crazed artists united in the same place, existing in the same age. Three exiles, three disdained geniuses, three different views that were ahead of their time. Three once prisoners of a broken system, now free. Deidara ran a finger across his headband, feeling the depth of the slash that split Iwa's insignia in half.
His gaze flicked over Sasori as a habit and lingered long enough for the latter to notice. An awkward atmosphere bubbled up around them.
"So, Kanyu, do you want to explain to Sasori here why you moved?" Deidara asked, then broke the eye contact.
"I was bored with living on my own, plus the clay supply in Ceramic has gone short," Kanyu said. "So I wandered around and found this place. It has seclusion, nice weather, perfect mud, flowers… and a handsome man whom I'm now married to."
Sasori threw his head back. "You're married?"
Deidara inspected inside the firing chamber for traces left by the explosions. "There are flowers?"
Kanyu made a face. "Talk about priorities. Yes. Both what you're looking for are over there."
As she spoke, she signaled to a low cliff at the far side of the valley, where a flower field rested. Deidara could see it well thanks to the scope he donned on his left eye, down to every drop of morning dew, every shudder of white curling petals. He squinted against the whiteness; even the clay used in Kanyu's works paled when met with such ghastly pallor. Kanyu's husband was a dark silhouette in the field, drowning amid those splattering white waves. If it hadn't been for his trained eyes, Deidara would have thought he had fallen into a genjutsu. The last time he did, he was forced into joining an evil organization, was so spellbound he thought Itachi was art. Not so great.
Deidara spent what felt like minutes exchanging pleasantries with Kanyu's husband, Kiiro, after Kanyu called him over. The man looked too simple for an artist's life partner, but he balanced Kanyu's personality well. Sasori stayed silent, observing them with evident annoyance that warped into animosity as each second passed. Deidara noticed this and brought the conversation to an abrupt end.
"Kanyu, I need some of your clay to experiment with my puppets," Sasori said after Kiiro had again disappeared into the field.
"I'm no stranger to your partner taking my clay without paying," sighed Kanyu. "Take as much as you want. It's stored in my workshop next to the cliff."
Sasori looked happy as he left.
"I see he's as bossy as ever." Kanyu regarded Deidara with a disapproving look. She was now moving between the kilns to add fuel. "You're going in there?"
"Nah, I'll stay here and help you."
To Deidara, making pottery was a child's play. He loaded Kanyu's left-over batches of sculptures into firing while she double-checked the amount of fuel in each kiln to make sure no accidents take place. Her close monitoring spoiled every of Deidara's attempts to sneak in more firewood. Deidara was disappointed to a great degree.
When there was nothing left to do, they huddled together in front of a humming kiln and watched. The fire blew warm air onto Deidara's face. Mini-explosions reverberated in his ears. The smell of burning clay was so rich it turned liquid, thick droplets of earthiness. Deidara held his tongue out to taste, then swallow the warmth that traveled across his body.
It was comfortable, too comfortable—the kind of comfort that made you want to pour your heart out.
"Actually, I didn't come here to visit you only," Deidara blurted out. "I want to… ask for some advice."
"Knowing you, either you want advice on how to murder Sasori or get into his pants." Kanyu ran a skeptical eye over Deidara's expression. "I won't be surprised if it's both."
"Is it that obvious?"
"So obvious only a thirty-something virgin like Sasori wouldn't get it," Kanyu shook her head. "You didn't argue much today. Are you guys fighting or something?"
Deidara scratched the back of his neck. "It's complicated."
"Just tell him."
"It's not that easy."
Kanyu looked uninterested. "Your solution? Ignore your feelings until they go away?"
"If I knew the solution, I wouldn't have to ask you, dumbass," Deidara flicked Kanyu's forehead. "Ignoring, yeah, I tried, for three damn years. It didn't work."
"Three years? That's some serious dedication," Kanyu teased, then quickly sobered up as Deidara's expression gravitated towards anger and his arm gravitated towards his clay pouch. "Okay, okay, I think I know why it didn't work. Feelings don't go away unless you have closure."
"I have closure," Deidara said. "He doesn't care about me, not in that way."
"But a part of you still hopes he does, doesn't it?" Kanyu stared through him. "If not, you wouldn't be here today, telling me this damn sob story about you and your crush as an S-rank missing-nin." She heaved a sigh. "That little tiny part, that optimistic voice, you have to obliterate it, crush it into nothing, build a wall at the end of the tunnel, because the heart is stubborn, Deidara. It clings onto the very last glimmer of hope."
Kanyu's words spoke to Deidara, to a part of him that was left in a corner and marred with a decade's worth layer of dust. Art, explosions, the Akatsuki, the Bijuu, and the killings—they crisscrossed and mutated and overlapped and muddled everything else. But Kanyu—she cleared away the fog. And on the other side of the fog was an alien realm.
For the first time in his life, Deidara found himself in a dilemma that couldn't be resolved with his fists, a problem whose solution didn't include anything between the lines of shinobi, responsibilities, more strength, more power… Because fighting would not stop these feelings.
Hearing it from a non-shinobi made it all the clearer. Kanyu's advice brought home how clueless killing machines like him were when it came to mundane matters like emotions and love. Deidara sat dumbfounded, feeling strangely naked, feeling like a fish out of water, wanting to run.
"What if I fail?" he said, after a long pause.
"What if you fail?" Kanyu repeated. "Deidara, look."
All the logs had melted along with the heat of the day. Deidara watched as Kanyu pulled out a finished vase from the kiln before them with a pair of tongs. She held it between them, then loosened the tongs' grip and let the vase fall. A whiff of wind materialized from her open palm and spun the vase in mid-air.
"Kiiro taught me how to use Wind Release," Kanyu said, winking. "My jutsu's pathetic, I know, but it suffices."
Seeing Kanyu's works in motion unmasked their latent beauty. As the vase turned, the series of cracks on its body coalesced to form a continuous stream of blooming and withering flowers. It was not simply a pattern but a motion picture, a flower's life cycle unfolding before his eyes.
"My art, Hanasaki, is an art born from brokenness," Kanyu said. "Signs of breakage and damage make it more beautiful. Stronger. Mature."
"You've been telling me that for the past two years."
"I've always looked at the clean, spotless pottery as babies. They are clean, innocent, sure, but they lack the hardship that trains them into more durable works."
After laying the vase down, Kanyu grabbed Deidara's wrist and positioned his arm on her lap. Deidara's confusion nearly blew up into panic when she proceeded to slide up his sleeve and feel around on his forearm.
"As I thought, someone who plays with explosions that much can't possibly be scar-free." Kanyu's fingers stopped at a reddish burn mark in the crook of Deidara's elbow. "But this is just the outer layer, you know? For a Hanasaki product to be perfect, it has to build up heat resistance from within."
"What are you getting at?"
Kanyu pinched Deidara's arm in frustration. "If I just want the cracks, I could grab a knife and carve them myself. What I want is for my works to be strong from inside out.
"What I'm saying is that, you shouldn't shy from chances of failure. Damage changes you as a person."
Deidara was ready to argue back that he had survived damage a human body wasn't supposed to withstand, but Kanyu added, "Inner damage, which disregarding your health and attempting suicide are not."
Until now, Deidara's life had been a straight line: recognizing his art, developing his art, stealing the kinjutsu for his art, deflecting from Iwa for his art, becoming a terrorist for his art, blowing up villages in his free time for his art. Back then, happiness was measured by the size of his explosions. Before these inexplicable feelings took root in his chest, those were the good old days.
Deidara thought he was advancing in life, but if Kanyu was right, if trials and errors were necessary for growth, then he—
"Have I not changed at all?" Deidara asked, putting a hand over his heart. "I don't think I have experienced failure, ever, unless it's in a battle."
"It's never too late to start," Kanyu said. "Even a failure as small as getting rejected can change you in ways you never imagined."
Apart from the flower field and little grass, the Valley of Lies was short of plants. The vegetable patches Kanyu grew were scattered across her backyard, and fragments of herself—ceramic plant pots, garden gnomes, and outlandish statues decorated the area behind her house in a turbulent, not-so-stylish way. Deidara wriggled his way through the crowded yard, his stomach churning. Kanyu's cooking left a lot to be desired, but she was a genial host, and she kept putting food in his bowl during dinner, kept complaining about how he was a picky eater. Kiiro, being the sweetheart he was, couldn't stop her.
In Kanyu's house, big news was to be announced at dinner. She divulged her plan to have a baby to Deidara with the brightest look on her face and a pair of undercooked teriyaki ribs. She also insisted that she would never let her child fall victim to Deidara's Explosionism, which sounded less of a threat and more like a challenge to Deidara.
Sasori, meanwhile, had been locking himself in Kanyu's workshop since the afternoon. Given his perfectionism, it wouldn't be surprising if he didn't come out until the title Pottery Master was etched on his grave. Deidara saw this as another opportunity to spend time with his partner. Acting on impulse while denying himself of shamelessness had become his specialty.
"Guess who's here to bless you with his wonderful company again, yeah?" Deidara asked as he opened the door with a violent push.
It seemed to have startled Sasori a little as he glanced up at Deidara, widened his eyes, then looked away and straightened his back. His crouching figure stretched into a neutral sitting position. No glares, no lashing-out scorpion tails, no death threats—it was Sasori's way of saying 'Welcome".
Deidara took off his mud-stained sandals and walked into the pottery studio. Kanyu's workshop was the size of a large room, jam-packed with the earthy colors of the wall, the floor, the furniture, and ceramic pieces. It looked fresh, albeit not tidy, and littered with misplaced tools. Based on the arrangement of shelves, Deidara could tell the workshop was divided into three sections: a wheel-throwing section where Sasori stayed, a trimming and glazing section, and a storage section for clay and unfinished works.
The wheel-throwing section consisted of two portable pottery wheels accompanied by two stools and a couple of plastic buckets. Sasori was occupying one seat, so Deidara picked up the other and placed it across from where Sasori sat, with a pottery wheel between them.
"What are you making?" Deidara asked. It wasn't until now that he noticed the whiteish, yet-to-dry substance sticking to some parts of Sasori's hands.
To demonstrate, Sasori tapped the piece of clay on the wheel. It was in the shape of a round and flat sculpture with its edges curling slightly upward. The uneven distribution of clay—some places being paper-thin, some places being chunky thick—gave it a flappy look. Deidara frowned at this abomination. It would not survive the potent fire of the kiln.
"A dish?" Deidara guessed.
Sasori blinked slowly. "A puppet head."
"Wow."
Deidara fought back a grin as he rolled the supposed clay puppet part into a lump and passed it to Sasori, whose silence suggested his disappointment towards the monstrosity he created.
"Let's start again. I'm going to help you, yeah? It has been years, but my skills are still sufficient."
Sasori received the clay supply from Deidara in the same quiet manner dictating his previous moves. He began molding the misshapen lump of clay in his palms without much effort, with his slim, experienced fingers hooked around the white chunk. Now that Deidara thought about it, the term 'experienced fingers' brought to mind some very disturbing images…
"I don't think you're supposed to rotate it like that," Deidara said.
"I have to make sure it doesn't have any air bubbles left, or it'll explo—" Sasori's face turned blank. Then he squeezed the clay as realization set in, first in his clenched jaw and second in his squared shoulders. "If you're trying to trick me into blowing things up, leave."
"Oops," Deidara smiled, impressed that Sasori was capable of seeing through his scheme so easily. "I thought that's the point."
Sasori was well versed in preparing clay for wheel-throwing, terrible at everything else. When he slammed the clay ball on the pottery wheel, bent over, and got into his ready position, Deidara told him to stop.
"You can't apply enough pressure if you sit like that," Deidara said. "Move closer."
Sasori did what he was told. Deidara's reaction to Sasori's sudden conformity was a ticklish sensation on his skin, giddiness, even. Sasori had always been the superior one, "the lead of the pair," as Leader put it. He had it all: a worldwide spy network, a war-borne title, and years and years battered by pain, fostered by power thirst, raised in bloodshed. None of those things mattered now. Now Deidara was in charge. He could order Sasori around. Even if it was a victory as petty as teaching Sasori pottery, to Deidara, it was a victory worthy of celebration.
"No, not like that. You have to hover above it," Deidara blew out a sigh as Sasori's knees collided with the wheel. "Dammit, spread your legs. Let your inner thighs touch it."
"Three alphabets," Sasori grumbled. "Three fucking alphabets, Deidara, and you have to phrase it like that."
"Your fault for being so slow."
Deidara and Sasori's routine bickering lasted for about two hours as Deidara guided Sasori through the steps of shaping pottery with patience. Only, that patience sometimes slipped when Sasori made stupid mistakes or asked questions in doubt of Deidara's ability. Nevertheless, Sasori was a fast learner. No human being could master the art of pottery overnight, but he was gradually getting the grip of the craft after multiple failures and starting again from scratch. His hand movements matured from stiff and awkward, to calmer, almost graceful.
Deidara watched Sasori's fingertips glide across the damp surface of the clay. It turned out Sasori was not only good at utilizing hard material, but he was quite skilled in handling things that were soft, wet, and slippery as well… Deidara shushed himself before his imagination crossed a line.
The air turned dense, weighted down by Sasori's concentrated chakra. He had got all the steps now; all that was left was practice. Deidara was not the type to let go of an argument, but he put away his competitiveness and propped his head in his palm, leaning forward to observe with mild interest. With each spin of the wheel, Sasori's sculpture became taller and closer to completion.
"Hey," Deidara said as he placed his hands on Sasori's. The coldness never stopped tugging at his heartstrings no matter how prepared he was. "Put your hands at this angle. Yes, like that."
They looked up in tandem. Sasori turned away.
"Danna, how can you shape your work without looking at it?"
With a slow turn of his head, Sasori riveted his eyes on the pottery wheel again. "…Yes."
"Why are you being so weird?"
"I'm not."
"Are you embarrassed? Is that it?" Deidara brought himself dangerously close, awaiting the fissures in Sasori's composure, but his own veneer was slipping away. "You're embarrassed because I'm touching you, yeah?"
To Deidara's surprise, Sasori didn't waver. He swatted Deidara's hands away in a harsh motion of his own. "Don't get ahead of yourself. I no longer have emotions. I can't be embarrassed."
"But do you feel it?"
"Feel what?"
"Me touching you."
There was a lengthy delay of reply following Deidara's words. Sasori picked up a needle tool on the floor and pricked it through the bottom of his spinning sculpture, measuring its thickness. "If I can't feel when I'm touched, I'll be at a major disadvantage."
"1/3 inch. Not bad, a little thinner and you're good to go." Deidara took the tool from Sasori and cast a cursory glance over it before putting it away. "Your chakra pathways are still intact, yeah? So you still know whether you're in contact with something, but not the actual texture of it?"
"Pretty much," Sasori said. "I know that you're touching me, but I don't know if your skin is soft or rough, warm or cold. I can sense your chakra, but that's not counted as feeling, I suppose."
"It's impossible to have mushy hands when you're a shinobi," Deidara grinned. "But mine are warm. Onoki liked using my hands as his heat packs. He said they shooed away the winter's cold."
"You give the most useless facts."
"I bet yours are freezing cold. Your human hands, I mean." Deidara rubbed his palms against each other. "They say the colder your hands are, the more loyal you are in love."
Sasori raised an eyebrow. "And how do you know I'm loyal in love?"
"Just a feeling."
"I don't do love, you know that."
"You can't take a joke, you know that?"
Sasori gave Deidara a half-smile as they settled into a companionable silence. Deidara got up and wandered around the workshop in search of things of interest. Once in a while, their eyes would meet, and Deidara would give Sasori an acknowledging nod to let him know he was doing alright with his sculpture. Deidara skimmed through Kanyu's failed products on a shelf at the back of the room, examining every artless nook and spots of chipped paint to dispel his jumbling thoughts. Tonight had been nothing but fulfilling. What Deidara didn't know was that it was going to be even more fulfilling, topped with a slice of awkwardness.
"The thing you said earlier, is it true?" Sasori asked. "The thing about… you liking guys."
Deidara almost dropped the ceramic mug he was holding. "So that's the reason why you've been acting all weird."
"I didn't know that was possible," Sasori said. "I've been out of touch with the whole sexuality thing… the whole humanity thing for so long. Last time I knew, there were only male and female."
Deidara returned the mug to its rightful place with a loud thud. "How insensitive."
"Oh? Is it a taboo, then?"
"You're really saying that with a straight face."
"Are we not supposed to discuss it?"
Deidara approached Sasori and sat down, this time not across Sasori but alongside him. "I taught you how to make pottery, and now you're expecting me to give you a sex-ed lesson."
"Tell me, I'm curious." Sasori's indifferent expression was getting on Deidara's nerves. "What sorts of things have they added in the dictionary since I was gone?"
"Just some new terms—you have some excess clay there," Deidara said as he handed Sasori a rib tool. "Anyhow, there are guys who like guys, girls who like girls, folks who like both, and folks who like neither."
"So, me."
"Perhaps," Deidara rolled his eyes. "There are people who don't want to identify with any group, too. Some are even trying to turn themselves into the opposite sex."
Sasori shifted in his seat. "I don't understand why humans feel the need to over-complicate things. It's just sexual attraction, right? People are attracted to other people. Why categorize?"
"Some people are obsessed with labels," Deidara said as Sasori's expression twisted into half-bewilderment, half-disgust. The info-dump was overwhelming to someone who extracted his own humanity at the age of 15, it seemed. "Whatever the hell people are attracted to, an animal, an object, a concept, there's probably a term for it."
Sasori's distaste was more and more palpable as Deidara went on.
"Anything can be sexualized," Deidara smirked. "But don't worry, there's not a term for people who are attracted to a piece of wood, as far as I know."
"Aren't you?"
Deidara was close to dropping dead. "That's not very funny."
Small moments in life were what made life precious. The moments that flashed by, lasting for less than a split second. They barely gave you a taste yet left you craving for more, hanging in the residue of emptiness that remained after their demise. Sasori's face when he finished his sculpture was one of those moments.
"I'm done." Sasori sprang up from his seat.
It was the first time Deidara saw Sasori smiling with teeth. Darkness poured through the cracks of the wall panels, but Sasori's excitement was so rare it lit up the room. Deidara froze in his spot. He was in broad daylight.
"Now I'll have to wait for it to dry, correct?" Sasori's voice receded into his default tone. He removed the clay from the wheel with a wire tool, laid it on a wooden tray, then carried it to a cupboard.
"Not completely." Deidara took a look at Sasori's newborn sculpture. It was rough with some bumpy patches of clay, a few rounds of refinement away from reaching finesse. "Put it on the wheel again for trimming when it's almost dry."
"Got it." Sasori stretched. "You head back now. I can take care of it myself from here."
"I want to help with the firing too."
"You're going to make my sculpture explode. Don't even try to deny it."
"But art—"
"Is not an explosion," Sasori interrupted. "Come on, it's late and I won't carry you back."
"I've got an idea." Deidara's words started to trail. He hadn't slept well these days, and his eyelids were screaming for respite, but something in him didn't want to back down. "How about I tell you stories while we wait, yeah?"
Drowsiness tugged at the corners of Deidara's eyes, dragging him to the nearest surface to rest his head. He let himself fall then jerked up. The movement shot a twinge of pain through his temples. He opened his mouth and rambled whatever came to mind.
The tales Deidara told were neither clear nor coherent, tiny snippets of his life he pulled out from memory. He told Sasori about the collection of Icha Icha novels buried deep inside his old sensei's drawer, about the clay spiders he planted in Kurotsuchi's braids, about the gush of chakra ripping through the flesh on his palms and chest when he first activated Iwa's kinjutsu. Deidara could never forget the most important story, his greatest ambition: to turn the moon into a ticking bomb.
Slumber nagged at Deidara, and this time he surrendered, submitting every control he had left over his body. He collapsed to the side. His head hit something hard, though not hard as the floor.
Deidara laid his head on Sasori's shoulder, amazed that he was still alive and well. Sasori's fingers weren't so experienced now. They walked in timid steps up Deidara's back and brushed his hair in stiff strokes and clumsy pats. Deidara looked up and found his reflection blinking back at him in those subhuman, hazy brown eyes. To call leaning on Sasori's shoulder an enjoyable experience was a far stretch; Deidara's neck hurt for having to bend low, and Sasori's hair-ruffling brought no relief but a worsening headache.
But those fingers knew how to cut open people more than expressing care. Deidara's head knew more of the taste of explosions than responding to intimate touches. So Deidara laid still, letting those blood-soaked fingers burn across his skull.
"How does your hair feel?" Sasori asked.
"Silky smooth."
"Liar."
"It's the truth." Deidara yawned. "Yours feel like the end of a broomstick. Do you know that?"
"I have no ways to find out," Sasori tapped Deidara's back. "Well? Ready to go back yet?"
"I'm going to do it."
"Do what? Blow up the moon?"
Kanyu was right. Sometimes you had to dive head-on into the thing that scared you. Everything Sasori said today, if anything, had further confirmed Deidara's one-sided feelings, but the heart was stubborn. It clung onto every glance, every change of tone, every touch.
"Danna, do you think I can make it?"
"I want to say no." Sasori gave him a quizzical look. "But if I managed to turn myself into a puppet, and Hidan managed to gain immortality through his crazy rituals, then you may have a chance."
Deidara laughed until he was out of breath. "A chance, hm? I wonder…"
Sleep took over him.
