Strings of Detonation

Fractures in the Mask

The road stretched longer than Deidara expected.

Winter had stripped the world bare, but now spring painted it back in small, stubborn strokes: the snow was gone, replaced by patches of green moss and the occasional burst of crocus forcing its way through thawed soil. Birds darted overhead, their cries sharp against the clear sky. Deidara tilted his head often, watching them with a faint smile tugging at his lips, though his thoughts weren’t nearly as light.

Sasori walked ahead of him, steady, silent, shoulders set beneath his cloak. Always untouchable. Always just out of reach.

Deidara bit the inside of his cheek. That single line—I heard you—kept circling in his head, gnawing at him. It wasn’t enough. He wanted more. He wanted something.

“Oi,” Deidara called lazily, stepping over a tangle of roots. “You’re awfully quiet again. Ain’t ya supposed to be lecturin’ me about keepin’ up, yeah?”

Sasori didn’t look back. “You’re keeping up.”

“Tch.” Deidara kicked a pebble forward, watching it skitter along the dirt path. “That’s it? No complaints? What, you sick or somethin’, un?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Every word from Sasori was clipped, precise, like he was holding his tongue in a vice. Deidara noticed it more with each exchange, and it only fueled him further.

He sped up, walking almost at Sasori’s side now, studying the older man’s expression. Nothing but that impassive calm. It made his blood itch.

“You know,” Deidara began, voice deceptively light, “you always got somethin’ to say when it’s about my art. Always criticizin’, always cuttin’ in. But when it comes to me? To real stuff?” He tilted his head, smirking. “You shut up real fast. What’s the matter, Danna? Afraid to admit somethin’, un?”

That got a reaction.

Sasori’s step faltered, just barely. His eyes flicked to Deidara, sharp as blades, and for a second Deidara thought he’d crossed the line.

“Watch your mouth,” Sasori said, voice lower than usual, rougher.

Deidara’s smirk widened, though his heart kicked faster. “Struck a nerve, yeah?”

Silence. Then, like a crack splintering through glass—

“You never stop talking!” Sasori snapped, sudden, fierce, startling even himself. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to—”

He cut himself off, jaw tight, but the damage was done. His voice had risen, colored with something raw, something that wasn’t cold or detached. His face betrayed him even further: faint color bled into his cheeks, an almost imperceptible flush beneath his pale skin.

Deidara blinked, caught off guard, then broke into a grin that was half triumph, half disbelief. “Well, well… look who’s human after all, yeah.”

Sasori’s eyes narrowed. He turned sharply away, cloak shifting as he pulled it tighter around himself, pace quickening as if distance could erase the moment.

But it couldn’t.

Deidara fell back a step, letting him walk ahead again. His grin softened into something smaller, private. For all of Sasori’s walls, for all his practiced composure, that slip had been real. And Deidara had seen it.

He tilted his head up at the sky, watching a swallow swoop low across the road. His chest felt lighter somehow, though he couldn’t have said why.

“So you do feel somethin’, un,” he murmured under his breath, so low only the breeze could carry it.

Ahead, Sasori’s shoulders stayed rigid, but his ears burned red beneath the edges of his hood.

The silence that followed wasn’t the old kind—the distant, suffocating quiet. No, this silence was alive, charged, and Deidara couldn’t help but smirk as he trailed behind.

For the first time, he’d made Sasori crack. And he wasn’t about to forget it.