A/N: Well, a thing that I have to warn my readers (if my work has any readers at all ಥ_ಥ) beforehand is that please don't use your brain when you guys read the first few chapters, especially chapter 2 and 3. Also, I have to tell you that I'm not a native, so I guess sometimes grammar and use of vocabulary inaccuracies are inevitable. Not that I'm suggesting my own work is rubbish (how could I do that to myself TvTT?) but I mean I'd be real glad if you guys could tell me if something is not correct because that's a way I can improve, yeah. Fair and (not necessarily brutally but it's still okay if it's brutally) honest feedback is welcomed:Đ

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Deidara found it amusing, the way her eyes occasionally glinted when they met his.

x-

"Kurotsuchi," He grinned "You're not sleeping, eh?" The blond ran his hand through her hair happily, yet not so gently. "So what? Wouldn't you let me?" She threw him an irritated, half-sleepy look, realising her previously immaculately groomed hair had been messed up. For his fun only. "I could have slept two seconds ago had it not been for your damn sudden interruption!" The black-haired growled.

"Sorry I didn't know that" He smiled innocently, sounding nothing as if he had felt guilty, "I thought I had found a better way to entertain myself rather than tossing and turning..."

"Disturbing me is not a good choice now, and why don't you find some other new ways to?"

"But I guess you're not able to sleep now, so why not, mmm?"

She glared at him, "And take your damn fingers off my precious hair. NOW!". But even before he had the chance to refuse, Kurotsuchi had grabbed a few strands of his long hair and pulled it, more violently than she expected – but to good effect, anyway. "Nooo, please stop Kurotsuchi!"

"But your hand is still on my hair, too!", groaned the girl. "It was for fun at first, but now it's my revenge, yeah!", "So why am I supposed to stop?"

The fight became more and more painful as each second passed by.

"Damn you!", she let go of his hair and it was the same for Deidara. "When have you learned to curse so much?", "When I was first disturbed during my damn sle-" She was suddenly cut off by the deliberate cough of her grandfather. He had opened the door so quietly she failed to detect his presence in her room.

"What are you guys doing at 12:30 PM?"

"Fighting, sensei." He pulled a somewhat unnatural grin. Graceful and respectful as his answer, it was all that made him deserve an aggressive dig in the ribs from Kurotsuchi, "Ouch, what?" Onoki narrowed his eyes at the two, but then those eyes unusually lingered at Deidara for a while. Kurotsuchi noticed it, his strange and somewhat stern look seemed like it was telling them Deidara had done something not right and should be wary of whatever he decided to do. Friction silently filled the room. She directed her look at the boy and saw him tense. 'What the hell?'

Something must have been wrong there, absolutely wrong.

"I don't expect you to do anything that harms one single civilian of this village." She didn't know what was happening but she saw Deidara lean back and stare at her grandfather with inscrutable eyes, him biting his cheek. She didn't understand what her grandfather meant. 'What the hell?'

Silence ensued for a bit longer while. "I'm serious, Deidara."

"What the hell?", she finally spoke out her thoughts, disrupting the conversation which was becoming a bit too unpleasant for her liking. But then he tilted his chin up, looking directly at his mentor, "I completely understand, un."

'What the hell they are alluding to?'

x-

And probably because of their noises, some other dreamy eyes opened with tiredness. "What's going on?". Onoki quietly closed the door and left. "Nothing", the blond shrugged his shoulders.

Their friends fell right back to sleep.

x-

Deidara, along with some of her friends, had come to her house for a sleepover – she was so ecstatic she didn't care why her dour grandpa even allowed it to take place. They had had a big, cool party and had spent the whole night discussing anything under the sun. The group had laughed uncontrollably together and even had to try (perhaps in vain) to suppress their laughter as their neighbour came to complain about all the noisy fuss they had made.

Everything was good.

Everything had been extremely fun and exciting, until that moment.

"What is it? Bro Deidara?". He gave her a glance that she couldn't describe. "It's nothing, really." He started to regret having stopped her from sleeping. "None of your business. You don't have to worry, hmm."

"I have to!"

The concerning look in her eyes seemed to prod him a little. "No…"

"Yes!"

Onoki wasn't the type of person who would show that deadly attitude so often. Something was absolutely wrong, and she would do anything to find out what the hell it was. Kurotsuchi tried to pull his hair violently again, "Or I won't let you sleep tonight!" The boy winced from pain but managed to get in a mischievous smirk, "Oh, I thought you're the one who craved sleep, yeah?" For a second, she had to pause, 'Shit, that's right, hmm. I still need to sleep myself - I cannot just pull his hair all night. Let me change my tactics'

"Alright, bro, please…" She turned to clinging to his legs and tried to tickle his feet. "No… haha…stop… actually I don't really want to reveal this…"

"Why? Is it something very bad about you and you want to conceal it?

"No, but actually… haha…"

x-

He did contemplate lying. He could lie to her and get away with everything he had done and would do.

Yet he loved his art so much he couldn't help but want to share with someone about his newfound passion. Lying meant denying it, denying its importance, greatness and magnificence, which were all undeniable to him. Illegal or not, he'd pursue his interest till the day he died, he decided. Deidara'd been fed up to the back teeth with all the annoying and useless restrictions in this village. Iwagakure was only a village. Not his home. Not where he found pure happiness. Nor was it the place in which he could unleash his artistic potential. There were kind people in the orphanage. There were festivals. There were great and powerful shinobis. There were friends. Still, that simply didn't matter to him as much as explosions. He found no reason to conceal what he loved.

"Okay… haha…now I'll tell you. And remember, don't make… haha… a fuss over it." She stopped right away, "Sure. Why should I-"

The door narrowly opened again. Onoki's annoyed voice echoed throughout the room. "Go to sleep, and don't be so noisy."

"Yes, sorry grandpa. He's goading me!"

"I need not to see anything to know his laughter was because you tickled him. And not only are you noisy but you're a bit too nosey, too. Now go to sleep and stop annoying others."

She was baffled. "G-Grandpa? You've been standing there all along?"

The door slammed.

x-

"I think he's really gone now, hmm." He whispered after a few more minutes. She nodded and looked at him. "Well, so firstly, what do you smell from my hands?". The blond offered her both of his hands. She moved closer to him so she could smell it better.

"It stinks."

"Hey! I'm serious!"

"Um, but I'm also serious when I say it stinks. Like when was the last time you washed your hands?"

"Okay, let me get straight to the point: it's clay."

"Clay? Clay doesn't smell like faeces. And you didn't wash your hands?"

"I'll take that as an insult! I've used some special techniques to knead my explosive chakra into clay. Actually, I'm doing this quite secretly, but it seems that your grandfather has discovered something and he scolded me for being stupid, yeah."

"It's indeed a deliberate insult, but what'll happen if you use the 'special techniques'? Will the concoction explode or something like that? Why did grandpa tell you off for being stupid? You did it the wrong way? Wait, why do you have to do it secretly? "

She saw glitter in his blue eyes in response to her first question. "Yes, it could explode. And even more than that...hmm", he told her with visible pride and excitement, "I can turn clay into animate beings that could breathe. They could move and detonate whenever I want them to."

…

"Okay? Wow?", she gushed sarcastically. Deidara had always been crazy and he liked crazy things. Probably her evil grandfather found this irritating and just made a visit to threaten him a little bit. Nothing to worry about, really. 'Wait, no, something is amiss…'. Stupid as it might sometimes be, her intuition had never been wrong. Never. And Deidara didn't explain why he had to do it secretly and why he had been criticised.

She was looking for something somewhere in her brain that sounded really relevant. Something dangerous that Onoki had warned her about. Kneading chakra into materials… He watched her in silence. As if he was anticipating something.

"Gosh! How could I forget it? Iwagakure's kinjutsu! What you're doing bears striking resemblance to a kinjutsu that Onoki has once mentioned to me, the one passed down through generations in our village." She muttered and tried to keep her voice quiet.

"Well, yeah you know it, so," He pursed his lips, "Now have you understood what has happened, mmm?"

x-

"Shit."

"Do you know the eventuality of all nukenins?"

"I don't care, un. Kuro-"

"Ignominious death."

"It's because they are too stupid to avoid it successfully, but-"

"Honestly I don't want you to die in such a way!"

"Alright. But remember, I won't be that stupid, and even if push comes to shove, I'm willing to if it's for art, un."

"You're too obsessed with it. You've been driven insane, Bro Deidara!"

"So?"

"What are you going to do? Leaving your passion?" She hesitantly asked, "Or leaving the village?" Of course when someone had stolen a kinjutsu, there were only two possibilities, one happening much more commonly than the other. He swallowed. And the answer was damn obvious.

"You cannot change anything, Kurotsuchi." A strange pain flashed through her chest.

"When?"

Without warning, Deidara pulled her into his embrace. He quickly planted a small kiss on her cheek, muttering something she was too shocked to comprehend. She was perplexed by his thoughts and actions all along. 'What the hell again?'. But as his words started to sink in, registering her already befuddled mind, she slowly understood why.

"Tomorrow, hmm. Sorry."

x-

1:30. They were still sitting face to face with each other, unable to sleep, unable to talk casually as they had always done.

Desperation was all she could feel. She knew his personality and abilities too well. She couldn't stop him, physically or in any sense or in any way. And basically, she was nothing to him and nothing compared to him.

But she had to do something.

Battling with him might prove her efforts to stop him but it would be a waste of energy since she knew who would win and all the proving meant nothing or maybe worse – it proved she was not enough and not good enough. She was well aware that even though she was a probably more brilliant and intelligent ninja than her average peer, he was way much better. An extremely clever and pretty experienced one, apprentice to the Third Tsuchikage and who had a lot of potential to develop. Not to mention that his kekkei genkai Explosion Release combined with the kinjutsu he had stolen was now a menace to the village. Hell, she was quite certain that if she chose this path, before she heard about his ignominious death, she could have experienced hers first.

She couldn't also be a crying girl. Crying is useless in front of criminals and ones who was going to become criminals – Onoki taught her so well about this. If he had no single bit of appreciation for the whole village, why would he had had to care about her tears? She saw it in his eyes. No love, no attachment, no sympathy was left. He was devoured by his feral passion for the thing he called "art". Had she had to show her inner weaknesses right in front of Iwagakure's would-be enemy, she would have chosen an ignominious death instead.

Still, she had to do something.

She tried to regain her composure. Then she tried to figure out something to say. Something that would hold him back and make him think twice – he must be clever enough to see what the wiser choice was. Nonetheless, she could not think of anything smart enough. And even worse, the thing she randomly picked and said after that served to do nothing but make her regret all her life: "Okay… now that we couldn't sleep, and you will go, could you um… hug me a little more? I know it's probably the last time."

'What the hell am I saying?'

She felt her cheeks reddened in leaps and bounds. Yet she knew she wouldn't do anything without a reason.

She thought she had one.

x-

Deidara blinked. Silence filled the room again and this time she had almost already accepted an ignominious death because nothing could be more embarrassing than that moment.

"Oh.. sure! Yeah… I thought I was the only one to enjoy hugging! Especially hugging sensei's granddaughter, hmm!" He slowly encircled her waist and snuggled against her body. She wrapped her arms around his neck and they didn't need to wait to get accustomed to the body heat of each other. "Nah, just address me as Kurotsuchi - he won't still be your sensei for too long."

Deidara grinned guiltlessly, intending to give her another kiss on her cheek – suddenly he felt like doing so for more than once, but she stopped him. "I'm a friend of yours, right?"

"Yes?"

"Close friend?"

"Probably?"

"And no longer will after tomorrow?"

"If you object to what I decide to do, then yes. Sorry." He bit his lips.

She looked into his resolute blue eyes and reluctantly put a small kiss on his nose. All the people in this house were crazy now. He opened his eyes wide in surprise, yet her kiss was still there – she didn't move her lips, nor did she move her eyes away from his. "And if I say I don't?", she whispered ever so quietly, as if someone could have overheard their conversation.

"Then I don't know, I'll still leave the village, un."

'Damn you motherfucker!'. And her kiss was still there, but fortunately Deidara didn't find it too awkward (although she did). Their intimate gestures, position and conversation sent weird sensations running wildly throughout her body. Anyway, there was a thing she was equally sure about – his heart was racing. 'What the hell is this again?'

Much to her amazement, they miraculously kept that position for another long while (surely, she had had to pull her lips back).

She enjoyed the warmth from him and simply didn't want to leave it – no, more correctly she didn't want it to leave. Half an hour had passed and she almost fell asleep, still hugging him. Kurotsuchi closed her eyes and breathed steadily. Deidara seemed like he had no interest in sleeping at all. 'Too excited to escape from Iwagakure?'

Even her sleepy mind knew that.

The girl let out a dreamy sigh, as if she had been mumbling in her blissful sleep, "Deidara-nii, don't you abandon me here…". She saw the boy look at her from the corner of her half-closed eyes, responding with an unreadable look. "Yes, I promise I won't, and I know you're not sleeping...mmm...", the blond smirked, putting another kiss on her cheek while she didn't expect him to. Okay, now she had to accept that his kiss would not let her sleep anymore.

"I only want you to listen to what I say before sleeping, not waking me up right before I sleep! Argh!"

He only grinned harder, watching her flushing so ridiculously. "Look at you, you like it, don't you?"

She crossed her arms, annoyed with the fact that his hands were still happily on her waist. "Okay, let go of me now, I swear I'll go to sleep and I'll not say anything else."

"Sorry, I've had a newfound penchant for disturbing Kurotsuchi's sleep, hmmm!"

She glared at him, but then hesitantly asked, "But not abandoning me means what?" She wanted to make sure he didn't misinterpret the question. 'Don't leave the village.'- how could he agree so easily?

"You asked it! It means what you mean."

"I don't think you mean what I mean."

"I don't care."

x-

She did get in a sleep that night, yet a short and unpleasant one. But she didn't think her goal was accomplished.

"He only said he wouldn't abandon me – he didn't talk about the village!?' She wondered, 'So how?'

x-

The next morning.

A young Kurotsuchi witnessed massive destruction done to her village and her very endeared friend fleeing it. Something inside her was broken. Yet she couldn't care less because the shock had made her feel completely numb. Pain was what she had expected, but not this great…

And for Deidara, the last thing he could remember about the moment he successfully escaped Iwagakure was the strong movements inside her obsidian, naive, charming eyes, as if thousands of aggressive waves were rolling in them. She, without a word or perhaps unable to utter one, watched him go further and further...

... away from her.

x-

There was Kurotsuchi. Still, that simply didn't matter to him as much as explosions.

Or at least, for the time being.

I have an anecdote to tell you about why I wrote this shit in English but not Vietnamese:

I'm from Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia and if anyone wonder why I write my work in English and there is not even a Vietnamese version TvTT, it's not that I don't respect Vietnamese and I think English is superior or something, actually I dearly love my mother tongue and my Wattpad account is full of stories in Vietnamese, but I wrote the first few chapters in the days leading up to my exam and I knew my mom who's monolingual didn't approve of this - she wanted me to focus on studying rather than writing bullshit. Yep, I wrote in English so that she would think I was practising writing argumentative essays or something like that. And because she still didn't like to watch me spend time on meaningless things that does not relate to studying whatsoever even after I've passed and been admitted to the gifted school in my province (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`), I still wrote this in English.

I know this couple (and also my OTP) has few works written about it, so I decided to take a shot. I've already finished the story with 10 chapters so I guess no one has to wait (I mean if anyone's reading my work at all). But if anyone's reading my work, I hope you could enjoy it:D