A/N: This is my first fanfiction that I am uploading on this website! I accept constructive criticism, but please no pointless flames. Thank you! :)

Deidara had always prided himself in being able to predict things.

It was one of the reasons why he was so excellent at improvising whenever he found himself in a pinch, every time his assigned mission partner wasn't there to back him up.

It was the gifted ability to whip up yet another spontaneous, brilliant strategy in the heat of battle, the flash of ideas that his mind creates despite already being pre-occupied with trying to prevent his ass from being slaughtered off, that was probably what made him so different from Sasori.

Sasori of the Red Sand, ever the strategist, was so, so different from the clay bomber.

While Deidara had a short, explosive temper much alike his creations, Sasori was always waiting, always calculating, never indulging himself, and never taking more steps than absolutely necessary.

Other times, he was almost bouncing on his heels like the child he looks to be, impatience running thick through his demeanour like a muddy river, insisting that he hated to wait.

Deidara had always found this to be almost hilariously ironic.

While Sasori never went as far as Deidara himself as to purposely let his art become noticeable to the entire world population, he held just as much pride in his work as much as the blonde did in his. When in the occasional few moments he displayed them, he made sure his opponents got a very firm taste of their true beauty.

This was probably the reason why Deidara could never predict his partner.

No matter what the puppet master said and insisted, his actions always seemed to contradict his words, or vice versa. It was as if he was living an invisible paradox.

Unlike all others, Sasori had confused him just as much as he had come to respect his talents and intelligence. It was a foreign feeling, to not be able to read and predict him like an open book.

And Deidara hated both himself and his partner for it.

Because he couldn't predict, he could never be prepared for an oncoming attack that spilled from the redhead's mouth on a bad day, or read every single one of his simplest actions, or understand why he chose some of the paths in his life that Deidara couldn't fathom for the love of God why he would do such a thing.

In other words, he was vulnerable.

To Sasori's credit, however, he never took intentional advantage of it.

It was an unspoken understanding that one's pride should be left untouched and not messed with, even despite their usual bickering over their clashing opinions about art.

Sometimes, Deidara would lie in his bed after a particularly long and boring day, and wonder what their partnership would've been like if Sasori didn't make the choices he had all those years ago. He doubted that it would've been any more or less eventful, but certainly more... alive. At times, he wondered what it would be like to stroll into the kitchen and join your partner for lunch, or walk into the bathroom and see another toothbrush placed alongside your own.

And then Deidara would be ripped out of his thoughts as the lights flicked off without warning. As much as Sasori hated to admit it, he needed to sleep, in order to replenish his chakra.

Deidara wasn't sure if he felt happy about this small humane attribute that was still left in his partner, or sad.

Sometimes, when his partner emerges from the ugly puppet cage he locks himself in, Deidara can't help but feel a little pang in his heart he recognizes as sadness, or even pity. He knows they are unnecessary, and that Sasori surely didn't need anyone's sympathy, but Deidara found himself secretly giving him a little every day. And he didn't stop it.

When they weren't fighting, Deidara would notice that Sasori had never really grown up, never really left his old self, just like his appearance said so. He was like a small child, stubbornly clinging to their dreams that everyone knew that could not be true. At times, Deidara would see Sasori as no more than a frightened boy who'd lost his parents, who blindly gave up everything to become what he wanted, resulting in an incomplete masterpiece that could not be reversed or fixed to perfection, that couldn't fall into any specific category. It was the last piece of the puzzle that had been manufactured too small, and therefore couldn't fit.

For once in his life, Deidara wasn't sure what to do.

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