Deidara is not allowed to talk to his partner whilst Sasori is meditating. Deidara is not to take Sasori’s hat when he has lost his own whilst out flying. Deidara is not to create “art” out of every inn they leave behind. Deidara is not to touch the puppets. Ever.

Deidara is not to kiss Sasori, not even when they make love.

Deidara doesn’t know where that rule came from, it has simply always been in place. What he does know is that Sasori is faster than him and those small, wooden hands will fasten around his neck the moment his concentration slips and he allows indiscretion to get the better of him.

Sasori’s grip is like iron – vice-like, and the Suna nin holds no compunctions about choking his partner until the light dims from his eyes and his frantic grip on his partner’s wrists loosens.

Don’t kiss me. Not ever.

Deidara doesn’t ask why not. Instead he leans his body against the cool hardness of Sasori’s puppet chest and when sensation overwhelms him he presses his nose into the crook of the wooden neck and tightens his grip on the sculpted muscles, fingers digging into oak.

Sasori’s puppets are made of the finest of woods, imported from Fire Country’s extensive forests. They gleam, polished and dark, and loom in the corner of the room like skeletal demons. Deidara tries not to look at them when he is strictly not kissing Sasori, plagued by the thought that they might be watching him back.

When Sasori sets aside his creations and steps out garbed in his true form, he is almost indistinguishable from any other youth. Any other ethereally beautiful youth not made of flesh and blood that is. Deidara knows that Sasori is far older than he appears, is far older in fact than Deidara is. He also knows that the puppeteer wears only the skin of his previous body pulled tight over wooden flesh and inset with his bones, because he has watched the methods his partner employs to make tiny puppets out of small animals. He has seen the look of blissful concentration as the puppeteer loses himself in his work, splitting open the body and pulling out the entrails, carefully slicing off the skin and cleaning the bones of flesh. He has witnessed him hollow out gorgeous replicas of the animal’s previous forms, sliding the bones inside and fastening them to the frame to seal in the essence of the creature before slipping its skin back over the new body. Perfect little imitations of life that Deidara finds absolutely freakish.

And yet at the same time, horribly fascinating.

He shouldn’t touch the puppets. Sasori has threatened him with terrible acts of retribution if he catches him playing with them. He would never dream of laying a finger on the large ones, he has the terrible feeling that they would tell their master on him the moment he left them. Or maybe they’d just turn on him there and then and try to tear him to pieces, even without their master’s direction.

Deidara is so horribly, painfully, almost irresistibly tempted to try and find out.

Sasori’s dark, watchful gaze always stops him.

Don’t touch my puppets, boy.

It doesn’t surprise Deidara that Sasori craves control in all things. He is after all, a puppeteer, and a puppeteer makes a career out of being in control. Hence it is Sasori that makes the rules, and Deidara that follows them. Mostly. As many at least as Sasori can enforce on him before the younger man summons his bird and leaps away to the skies and safety.

Sasori must be in control even when they make love. Deidara supposes he should have expected that really. And what does it matter, for he doesn’t mind all that much. If he is honest, it’s almost nice. Makes him feel secure, wanted.

Needed.

Yeah, like he used to be.

And Sasori is older and seemingly so much more experienced with what a body can crave, how it can need to be touched in just a certain way. Sasori, Deidara thinks, knows a disturbing amount about what makes a man’s body tick. And how to make his partners do just what he wants them to. Sometimes he uses chakra threads attached to Deidara’s wrists and ankles and thighs to make him move as he wants him to, and Deidara lets him because he trusts Sasori. After all, Sasori is a puppet master and what puppet master isn’t dedicated to the wellbeing of his puppets?

He thinks perhaps that it would physically pain Sasori not to take proper care of one of his creations. And although Deidara is no intricately sculpted wooden toy, he is not blind to the parallels.

No, Deidara trusts Sasori implicitly in those situations.

But the kissing rule, he cannot even begin to explain that one. The first time Sasori touched him in the manner of a lover, Deidara had leaned in to kiss him and found his chin gripped tightly in the older man’s fist. The youthful face had been so dangerously calm and the voice that told him “no” so utterly mild that it was obvious that this was an issue of great import to the other man. Confused, Deidara had asked, “Why not”? Sasori’s answering words had stayed with him much longer than the bruises the puppeteer’s fingers had left on his chin.

Don’t kiss me, I’ll kill you.

Of course, Deidara just wouldn’t have been Deidara if he hadn’t tried to push the limits eventually. And really, who didn’t want to kiss their lover? It was a natural thing, wasn’t it? Everyone did it, it felt good.

The puppeteer’s lips had been soft and supple in those few brief seconds he’d had to caress them with his own before Sasori’s fist connected solidly with the side of his face. He’d found himself suddenly facedown in the bedclothes straddled by a bed-partner seemingly determined to throttle the life out of him. Gasping pleas and muffled protests got him nowhere and the white-hot rage in Sasori’s chakra had told him straight off that this was no lover’s game. That and the fingers trapping the air in his lungs and making his blood beat behind his eyes like a drumbeat.

He’d honestly thought he was going to die, naked and facedown in bed, suffocated amidst the goosedown pillows. What a way to go. But Sasori had finally relented when his partner had gone limp and still beneath him and had left him there, bruised and shaken and definitely no longer in the mood. Deidara had never tried to kiss him again.

Instead they make love with caresses and fingertip touches and Deidara never puts the palms of his hands near Sasori’s face for fear that the other nin might think he is trying to be clever. And for his part, Sasori never places his lips on any part of his partner’s body either.

Deidara thinks it a strange way to make love, but he has never complained for Sasori is so skilled in other ways of administering pleasure that it really doesn’t matter to the ex-Stone nin. And of course it is better than being attacked in bed. No, Deidara contents himself with expressing his pleasure by pressing his cheek to Sasori’s neck, or rolling his head back on his partner’s shoulder in limp abandon. Giving over control. Deidara is pretty sure it gives no end of pleasure to the puppeteer to win control with such ease.

Over the years of their partnership, Deidara has become somewhat skilled at dealing with Sasori’s evil temper. He wonders if all Suna nin have that same scorching, abrasive temperament, but when he asked Sasori the only reply he received was a wild slash of the scorpion’s tail in the vicinity of where his neck would have been if he hadn’t interpreted the movement and flipped quickly out of the way. He took the furious glare that followed his hastily retreating form as an affirmative.

“Sasori-danna?”

“What do you want, brat.”

“We could stop here for the night, look! It sells dango, un!”

“I don’t like dango.”

“I do…un?”

The inn that Deidara has singled out is small and tucked neatly away down a forgotten side street. Sasori gives it a cursory glance over before nodding and stalking towards the entrance with his usual short tempered impatience. Deidara grins happily and unpins the menu from its place on the billboard, mentally selecting dinner as he follows his partner inside.

The woman behind the counter is grey-haired, her skin wrinkled like a plum left out to dry in the sun. She looks up when the menu is placed on the counter in front of her and a manicured fingernail taps excitedly at one of the selections.

“Eh, Obaa-chama! Are you still serving this?”

The youthful blond-haired man staring intently down at her is radiating eager hopefulness and the old woman cannot help but smile back at him.

“Ah, yes, I can have some of that made up for you!” she exclaims, charmed beyond reason by the grin that lights up the boy’s face.

Wrapped in genjutsu to divert attention away from his hulking form, Sasori hovers at his partner’s shoulder, only half-listening as the boy works his charms on the owner. Any time spent within the bounds of a city or town necessitates the use of at least basic genjutsu to prevent the townsfolk from querying the deformed monster in their midst. It has been a long time since Sasori stepped outside of Hiruko for anything other than a serious fight or those times that he is sure of the knowledge that his surroundings are absolutely secure.

This place is small, out of the way and clean. Acceptable. He follows Deidara to their room once the boy has wrangled keys out of the old woman and immediately sets about securing the area whilst the boy deflects the woman at the door. Eventually she leaves with promises of returning with food, and once the door is securely closed and trapped behind her, Sasori steps out of Hiruko and seals the puppet back in its holding scroll. Slipping the paper cylinder underneath his robes, he begins to set out his puppet traps around the doors and windows. Thin wires tethered to poison darts, tiny mouse puppets that sit under the bedside cabinet and spit venomous needles, poison vials under the pillow.

He has to move Deidara’s coat and hat before he can get to the bed for the youth has dropped them in an untidy pile in the middle of the floor before nosing out the room, opening drawers and running his fingers along the line of old books on one shelf.

“Not bad, un Sasori-danna?”

The puppeteer ignores him and drapes the abandoned Akatsuki coat over a nearby chair. The boy, used to his companion’s reticence, pads over to the window and flings it open, leaning out and craning his neck skywards.

“Unnn, nice day for flying,” he says speculatively. “Might take Chido out for a ride later.”

Pulling himself back inside, he hooks a tiny wire loop around the window catch before slipping the panel shut and taping the end carefully to the underside of a paper seal that he attaches to the window frame. Secure in their routine, the two nin set out their traps in companionable silence until the soft knocking at the door heralds the arrival of their food.

Deidara has ordered enough for two, as is their custom, though he will be the only one to dine. It is not as though it matters overly, the young man is more than capable of clearing both their shares. Sasori has long since given up making comments about where he manages to fit it all. Instead he watches the boy feed himself, following the movements of hands and jaw and taking in the boy’s obvious enjoyment of the meal.

Sasori does not need to eat regularly. The times he requires sustenance to maintain the thin layers of flesh and the delicate tracery of nerve and brain tissue are few and far between. He is beyond such things now. But that does not mean that he cannot still take pleasure from the obvious enjoyment of another.

Deidara is used to the close attention that his partner pays him during mealtimes. In the beginning it had bothered him, made him wary and uncomfortable, but after long exposure he has come to almost relish the keen interest of his partner. It was, after all, how he managed to entice the other into his bed. There is nothing quite like the fascination of another in the sensations that one is experiencing, to draw them irresistibly closer.

Deidara grins and runs his tongue slowly down a bamboo stick to clear off the last traces of dango. Sasori’s gaze is calm, even, and he thinks amused too underneath the outward veneer of tranquillity as the puppeteer follows the movement with his eyes.

Deidara had been utterly shocked the first time that Sasori had revealed to him the form his body took underneath his robes. Of course, he had known of the puppeteer’s history from Leader-Sama, and the implied observations that Zetsu whispered to him in the early days along with Kisame’s gruff humour meant that he knew of Sasori’s puppet body long before he even met his partner “in the flesh”. Still, he had not been quite as prepared as he could have been for the massive alterations that Sasori had inflicted upon himself.

It would be fair to say at this point, that the positions of Sasori and Deidara on what constitutes “art” are somewhat far apart.

Deidara had shrugged mentally at the time; after all, he had gone into this knowing the…eccentricities…of his partner, and decided there and then that it was all one huge interesting experience. And Deidara has never been one to turn down an interesting experience.

He sets the bamboo stick down on his plate and just as Sasori is beginning to lean towards him, rises fluidly to his feet, and twisting just so to avoid his partner’s grasp, is up and at the window in a heartbeat. Flipping the seal and opening the panel, the last thing he supposes that Sasori sees is his cheeky grin before he leaps out into the darkness and the night.

“Don’t forget to reset the seal, Sasori-danna...!”

The puppeteer scowls at his retreating partner’s mischief, just catching the beating of giant wings on the night air before the door explodes inwards with a thunderous whump of displaced air. But Sasori is fast and his summoning scroll is already open. Flames roar around him and as he dives down behind Sandaime’s sheltering form he thinks to himself that this is taking it a little too far, even for Deidara’s warped sense of humour.

The first thing that Deidara thinks as the window blows out below him is “hey, that wasn’t me!” followed closely by, “Shit! Sasori-danna’s gonna be so pissed off if his puppets get scorched!”

By the time he has even half-finished the thought, his hands are already moving in a series of quick seals and with a tap of one foot he sends Chido swooping back down towards the inn.

Sasori guts the first ANBU that pokes his head round the door, grabbing him by the neck and plunging his blade deep into the man’s belly. The masked nin drops with a strangled gasp, clutching uselessly at his torn stomach, blood flowing over his clenching fingers.

Whipping around, the puppeteer sends Sandaime sweeping in behind himself to block the entrance with his body as its master makes for the window. Just as he is reaching for the scroll that will allow him to re-summon Hiruko, the wall to his left explodes inwards in a hail of brick and mortar. Cursing vehemently, Sasori swings Sandaime around to face the four ANBU that leap in through the new entrance. Undeterred they throw themselves forward. Sandaime catches one with a sweep of one serrated arm, and a second trips a hidden puppet trap that sends a wave of deadly spines thudding up her body and into her face. She screams and drops writhing to the floor, the blood of her impaled comrade pattering over her form as Sandaime flings him towards the wall.

The two remaining ANBU dive and roll, leaping to their feet, katana in hand and charge. Behind them Sasori can see three more leaping the rubble of the wall and two coming in through the unguarded door. He snarls and is just about to reveal his own weapons when the floor in front of him explodes in one of Deidara’s trademark jutsus and the force of the blast flings him backwards and out of the blown-out window.

For a few heart-stopping seconds he freefalls and then suddenly a solid surface hits him squarely in the back and his fall comes to an abrupt halt.

“Unnn! Sasori-danna! Bastard ANBU!”

“You fucking idiot!” Sasori snarls and flips himself to his knees on Chido’s back, pulling desperately on the strings of chakra still attached to his fingertips. Below them, Sandaime is swung violently out of their burnt-out room, trailing smoke and debris as Sasori reels the puppet up out of harm’s way. It swings along beneath them as Sasori perches on the back of Deidara’s giant bird and pulls out a keeper scroll from his robes. He activates it with a quick series of one-handed seals and the puppet disappears in a cloud of sulphurous smoke. It will have to wait until later when they are clear of town before he can check the damage.

Deidara looks between the dust-coated puppeteer’s furious face and the ANBU gathering at the edge of the window. This time, he thinks, Sasori won’t mind him bending the rules just a little.

His hands flash in a succession of arcane gestures, and there is a heartbeat, a sudden ominous silence below them in which the ANBU pause, look around and then try in vain to flee, before the entire building erupts in a thunderous explosion of brick and flames.

Deidara grins into the darkness and the flames of the burning building dance in his eyes.

“Now that is what I call art! Yeah!”

At his side, Sasori is glaring down at the rubble of the inn, his eyes narrowed and his lips pulled back over his teeth in a furious snarl. Tonight has almost risked damage to his most beloved of puppets.

Damn ANBU.

Forcibly he pushes the overwhelming rage back down and consciously loosens the grip that is digging his fingernails into the clay of the bird’s back. Sandaime did not seem to have incurred any damage that a polishing cloth and some wax will not remove. Nothing has been lost. Except their ability to re-enter yet another town.

At his side, Deidara is chuckling under his breath in delight at the destruction. Sasori shakes his head in exasperation and his brows lower ominously.

“New rule, brat.”

“Un?”

“From now on, I choose the inns.”