The storm hadn’t let up. Snow drifted sideways past the cracks in the wall, piling against the edges of the ruined house. The wind howled like a beast outside, but inside, the air was steady—quiet but heavy.
Deidara sat cross-legged near the broken table, rolling clay between his fingers. His color had returned, faint but enough. Every so often, he shaped a tiny bird or fish, then let it crumble back into a lump.
Sasori sat opposite him, tools spread neatly in front of him as he adjusted the joints of a half-assembled puppet. His hands moved with perfect precision, his face a mask of indifference.
The silence between them stretched taut, filled only by the whisper of clay and the click of metal.
Finally, Deidara broke it with a smirk. “You know, if anyone else saw us like this, yeah… they’d think we were an old married couple stuck in a snowstorm.”
Sasori didn’t look up. “You find humor in everything, don’t you.”
“Not everything. Just things that make you twitch.”
At that, Sasori’s hands stilled for half a heartbeat before resuming. Deidara caught it instantly, grin widening.
He set the clay bird on the table and leaned forward, elbows propped. “Admit it, Danna—you’d miss me if I wasn’t around.”
Sasori’s gaze flicked to him, sharp and cold. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
Deidara tilted his head. “So you wouldn’t miss my art? My genius? My charming personality?”
“I wouldn’t miss your noise.”
“Ha! Liar.”
Their eyes locked across the table, silence thickening, louder than the storm outside. Deidara leaned in a little further, his grin softer now, though his voice stayed playful.
“You keep acting like you don’t care, but… you’re the one who dragged me out of the snow. The one who held me all night, yeah. That wasn’t efficiency.”
Sasori’s expression didn’t change, but his hands had stilled completely. For a long moment, he said nothing, only stared at him.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter, almost strained. “You talk too much.”
Deidara’s smirk faltered—just a fraction. He caught the tension in Sasori’s tone, the way it wasn’t cold but… brittle.
He leaned back slowly, watching him. “...You’re scared of something.”
Sasori’s gaze sharpened. “You presume too much.”
Deidara shrugged, rolling the clay between his palms. “Maybe. But I’m right, yeah.”
The storm wailed against the walls, a perfect mirror to the tight silence between them.
---
Later, when Deidara stretched out on the floorboards with the cloak still wrapped around him, his grin returned. “Bet you hate this. Being stuck with me, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.”
Sasori adjusted a gear with deliberate precision. “I don’t run. And I don’t hide.”
“Mm. You just sit there, all stiff, pretending you’re wood through and through. But I’ve seen the cracks, Danna.”
Sasori’s jaw tightened. “You mistake imagination for insight.”
“Do I?” Deidara pushed himself up on one elbow, hair falling into his face. His grin softened into something sharper, more curious. “You could’ve let me die. But you didn’t. You could’ve told me to shut up hours ago. But you didn’t. You’re letting me get under your skin—and you hate it, don’t you?”
For once, Sasori’s stillness wasn’t composed. It was tense. His hands hovered over the puppet parts, unmoving. His gaze flicked to Deidara, unreadable, before snapping away again.
“You’re insufferable,” he muttered.
Deidara laughed, bright and alive, the sound bouncing against the broken walls. He pushed himself up fully now, crossing the short space until he sat only a breath away from Sasori, watching him intently.
“You can call me insufferable all you want, un. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re keeping me alive. Doesn’t change the way you—” he leaned in slightly, eyes glinting— “look at me when you think I’m not watching.”
Sasori’s breath caught, just faintly. Too faint for anyone but Deidara to notice.
The silence snapped taut, electric.
Deidara tilted his head, grin crooked but gentler now. “...You don’t scare me, Danna. Not the way you want to.”
For a moment, Sasori looked ready to lash out, to bite back with the sharpness of his words or the deadliness of his threads. But then he saw the look on Deidara’s face—open, stubborn, alive—and something inside him faltered.
His voice, when it came, was barely above a whisper. “You should be.”
Deidara smiled softly, leaning back but keeping his eyes locked on him. “Too late.”
YOU ARE READING
Strings of Detonation
FanfictionOne's phenomenal, one's eternal, both can't shut up about it.
