“Hmm…” you say, pressing your finger to your bottom lip. “How abouutttt…-” You click your fingers. “Let’s have a party!”
You hear a few yells of approval, and Hidan calls, “Fuck yeah! House party!”
You laugh. “No, Hidan, not that kind of party! I mean a real party! Dancing and waistcoats and champagne in small glasses!”
He gawks. “Are you fucking kidding me!? I’m not dressing up like a sissy for you, bitch!”
“Hey!” You yell, scowling at him- that is until the voice from the back of the room calls,
“____, I think that is a marvellous idea. I believe even Konan will approve of it.”
You raise your eyebrows, turning to look at the shadow with the eyes.
“Thank you, sir!”
“No fucking way! There isn’t a chance in hell that I’m getting all posh-”
“You are, Hidan. You have no choice.”
The ex-waterfall ninja doesn’t reply so you grin in victory. Pein says from the back of the room,
“Everyone is to attend in formal attire. ____, as you are a girl, I believe you’ll be taking longer to prepare. You can go now, the party will begin at nine – giving you two hours, and you may be happy to know I will also be inviting Konan.”
You jump up and bow. “Thank you, sir.”
With that, you turn on your heel and dash out of the room at top speed, heading for your room. Once you get the door closed you set to work. Two hours isn’t really a long time- well not for you at least, I mean it takes you forty-five minutes in the shower anyway. Speaking of which, the shower is the first place you run to. You turn it on, strip down and dive in. Jumping in so quickly, the shower doesn’t have time to let the hot water run through so you yelp, the cold water slamming into you. Soon enough it warms and so you get to work, putting the shampoo in your hands and then lathering it into your hair.
A good forty minutes later and you jump out. You throw on a towel and start looking for the portable hair-dryer. As soon as you find it you turn it on and run back into your bedroom, heading for the wardrobe. The hardest part of going to a party; choosing an outfit.
You turn the hair-dryer off, finished with it and throw it backwards onto your bed, then with your now free hands you search through your wardrobe for something nice to wear. Just then there’s a knock at the door. Suddenly conscious you’re only in a towel you call,
“Who is it?”
“Konan.”
You let out a sigh of relief. “Come in.”
The blue-haired girl pushes open the door and walks in holding two dresses in her hands. She looks at you and says,
“I can’t choose what to wear!”
You laugh. Konan is known to be a generally calm, collected person – though in your opinion that’s complete rubbish. She’s absolutely nothing like that around you; never has been.
“Tell me about it! So many dresses, so little opportunity!”
Konan smiles. “You help me, I help you?”
You nod. “Sure!”
And with that, the two of you set on choosing an outfit for Konan to wear. You settle on a long dark blue dress with spaghetti-straps and a cut down the back that falls to just above the small of her back, with matching high-heeled Greek-goddess sandals and the usual paper flower in her hair.
Now it’s your turn. Konan tells you to sit on the bed while she ‘works her magic’. She sieves through your wardrobe, throwing random dresses at you, then stops dead when she spots something. She pulls the dress out of the wardrobe and holds it up to you.
“This one.”
You look at the dress and raise an eyebrow. “Really? Isn’t it a little…uhh…bright for something like this?”
“No of course not!...and even if it is, when are you ever going to get to wear it again? Now put it on!”
She throws the dress at you and looks at you expectantly. You stare at her, then as you know you’re not getting an opinion on this, you put the dress on. As you’re doing so, Konan routes through the bottom of your wardrobe looking for shoes. As you stand up and dust the dress off, Konan produces a pair of matching heels. When she sees you in it she smiles.
“See! I told you you’d look amazing! Look in the mirror.” She says, opening the wardrobe door so you can have a look at your self in the full-length mirror on the inside panel. You raise our eyebrows at your reflection.
“Wow-…I-…it looks-…”
Konan smiles and hands you the shoes. “You look wonderful.”
The dress is a baby pink, halter-neck, corseted prom dress with thousands of tiny embroidered crystals across the upper body and along the straps. You had managed to obtain the dress back when you had visited the land of lightning a year or so ago, and since then there has never been the right occasion to wear it… until now. You slip on the baby pink heels then you, along with Konan, rush to the dressing table in your room to start doing your hair and make-up.
At ‘8:50PM’ the two of you leave your bedroom, dressed up enough to hit the Ritz and make your way through the Akatsuki hideout. There’s not a person in sight. As you’re walking you whisper,
“Are we the last ones to arrive, you think?”
Konan nods. “Looks like it.”
As the pair of you step into the living room, Konan grabs you and pulls you to your left.
“Pein said to go this way!”
“Okay!” You say, ever so slightly puzzled at what’s going on. Where exactly are you going? After another moment of walking you appear outside a door. That’s when you realise where you are. You raise your eyebrows.
“He’s really pulling out all the stops tonight, isn’t he?”
Konan laughs. “Tell me about it…-though I must admit, I gave him most of the ideas.”
You laugh as Konan opens the door. You raise your eyebrows.
You step forward into the room, standing above the ground level on a balcony. There are possibly over a hundred people in the room – some of who you have never seen before in your life. As you walk forward to descend the staircase, you lean and whisper,
“Who are all these people?”
She whispers back,
“Akatsuki’s spies. Pein bullied them into coming.”
You laugh at her remark. The pair of you reach the bottom step, then you wave goodbye to Konan as Pein arrives and offers her his arm, saying how beautiful she looks. You look around the room, trying to spot one of the nine people you actually know. That’s when you manage to spot three of them sat at one table. You make your way over to them and smile when they look up. As if on cue, two of them rise to their feet and one offers you his chair.
“Oh, thank you, Sasori!”
“My pleasure.”
When you sit down, Sasori sits in the next seat along and the other stood up, Deidara, sits as well. Hidan – the other at the table – is still sulking about the whole thing. You do have to admit though; he looks cute in a dickey-bowtie. In fact, all three of them look rather nice in suits. Better than their usual blood-stained, shabby, untidy clothes at least. You look between the three of them, waiting for someone to do something or even say something… only they don’t so you decide to turn and look at the dance floor, hearing Dmitri Shostakovich’s ‘Romance’ start to play. You and all of the other members of Akatsuki know it; this is Pein and Konan’s song.
You see everyone clearing the floor to make way for the elegant pair walking to centre-stage.
They stop in the middle of the room, underneath the chandelier, then hold each other in their arms, slowly starting to dance in time with the lullaby-like music. You watch the both, smiling at how lucky your friend is. Sometimes you’re jealous of the relationship she ha with Pein.
You rest your head in your palm and continue to stare into the middle of the room. Doing this, you don’t notice Deidara looking back and forth between you and the table-top. Sasori -on the other hand- does. He watches his blonde partner for about a minute, then when he looks at you for the eighteenth time, Sasori swiftly kicks Deidara in the shin. There’s a muffled yelp from the unsuspecting blonde.
You look back at the table to check what’s going on only to see Deidara glaring daggers at Sasori. Nothing new. You laugh quietly – not wanting to disturb the music – then turn back to the two on the dance-floor
As soon as your back is turned, Sasori makes sure he has Deidara’s attention the he fixes the blonde with a look that means; ‘Stop looking at her unless you want to make it obvious.’
Deidara glare at him again, then he replies with a facial expression that says, ‘Well maybe I want her to know!’
Sasori raises his eyebrow, smirking, as if to say; ‘Oh really?’
Hidan- who is still sat at the table, never once having talked because he’s having a protest against being made to dress up in a suit – looks between the two boys and gives them a facial expression of his own; ‘What the fucking hell are those two pricks doing!?’
All three males look towards the dance-floor when they hear the song ending. They all start to clap at the same time, knowing if they don’t they won’t see tomorrow.
You smile, watching the pair walk off hand-in-hand as a livelier, more up-beat song starts to play. You sit there, tapping your foot against the floor in time to the music.
Sasori watches you for a moment, this time it is he who looks between you and Deidara. He sighs to himself. Does he have to do everything?
-Flashback-
“Ugh! Sasori, I don’t know what to do, un! She’s going to drive me crazy!” Deidara said, storming round his room as Sasori watched on from the bed, half-dressed in his tux and lazy-eyed.
“So why don’t you just tell ____ you like her?”
Deidara stopped momentarily, looking at Sasori as if he had just told him to kill a puppy.
“I can’t do that, Danna! It’s not that easy, un! ____’s so…so…” his eyes seemed to glaze over as he thought on, “…amazingly perfect…”
Sasori stared at him as if he’d gone mad.
“Calm down, Deidara, she’s just a girl.”
The blonde snapped from his daze, a sudden dampen on his expression.
“But Danna, she’s not just another girl, you know? I think I-… I think-” Sasori raised his eyebrows; actually shocked at what he was hearing. “Sasori, I love ____.”
After the confession was made, there was an awkward silence that fell over the room. Sasori decided to break it, getting up, walking over to his wardrobe and pulling out the shirt he should have already been wearing across his wooden chest. With his back to the bomber he said,
“You should tell her.”
Deidara looked shocked again.
“But-”
“-or not, the choice is up to you.”
And with that, Sasori walked into the bathroom, leaving Deidara to contemplate his words.
-End Flashback-
Sasori, seeing you longing expression for the dance-floor and Deidara’s longing expression for you, he takes it upon himself and rises to his feet. Deidara is the first to catch his gaze so he tells him to get up, then the red-head walks round so he’s in front of you.
“____. Do you want to come and dance with Deidara and me?”
You look at him for a paused moment, then smile and stand up, you dress flowing around you legs.
“Sure!”
So the three of you walk onto the already half-full dance floor and begin to dance together, swaying and chatting, laughing. You’re glad they had asked you up. It would have been a shame to have gotten all dressed up for nothing.
As the second song starts to play you see Sasori start to walk away.
“Hey, Sasori, where you going?”
He turns to you and says,
“I’m tired.”
“Okay!” You say brightly.
“Danna!” Deidara whines. This makes you look at him so he turns to look away, deciding to keep to himself instead of complaining at how Sasori leaving you two alone is only going to make him feel awkward. Little does he know you’re feeling much the same way – only you’re better at hiding it.
Earlier that evening you’d talked with Konan about your growing feelings for Deidara – you’d made her promise not to tell anyone. Unfortunately Konan hadn’t classed a puppet as ‘anyone’ so right before the party she’d managed to have a word with Sasori.
Sasori leaves the dance-floor so you turn back to Deidara and continue dancing – that is, until you hear the sudden record-change.
You both look over to where the stereo-system is and see Sasori stood next to it, a small smile on his lips. A gentle song starts to play through the speakers, catching you off guard.
You notice people clearing the dance-floor again so you go to leave; only Konan appears and stops you.
“____, this is your song.”
She says, pointing at the blonde who is having the same pep-talk from his red-headed team-mate.
“But Konan-”
She turns you around and pushes you back onto the dance floor.
“Go on,” She says kindly. You stumble into the middle of the room to Deidara – who has already been shoved there by the not-quite-so-gentle hands of Sasori.
You stand next to each other and for the first time you take a proper look at his face. You start to blush, seeing his deep sky-blue eyes looking down at you.
He clears his throat nervously,
“Uhhh…____, would you like to dance, un?”
You nod your head rapidly, feeling the heat of a hundred eyes on you. Deidara smiles and steps forward, reaching his hand out and placing it on your waist. You give him a gentle smile, seeing his own blush, and lean up, placing a hand on his shoulder. In unison you both bring your free hands together, meeting in the middle and entwine your fingers together.
This seems to trigger something in the crowd of onlookers because they seem to drop their formal stances and start to woot and holler, cheering you two on enthusiastically.
You both look at each other and smile. Deidara mutters,
“Shall we, un?”
You nod. “Of course.”
He gives you a smile then you feel yourself being pulled around the floor as Deidara leads you in a dance. At first you’re nervous, stiff and nearly tripping, but as you two progress around the room you relax, even leaning forward and resting your head against Deidara’s chest. He looks up at the ceiling when you do so, either trying to hide the blush or the Cheshire-cat-like grin on his face.
He lets go of your hand and instead, wraps his arms around your waist, inching you closer to him as he holds you in his embrace. You, in turn, with your free hand, drape your arm across his shoulders, nuzzling your head closer into his chest.
The two of you continue to sway on the spot together, not even noticing the others coming to join you on the floor- Pein and Konan included. As you close your eyes and sigh happily, Deidara looks over your head, into the crowd. He spots his red-headed partner, whose staring at you two contently, and mouths the words,
“Thank you.”
This is so nice!
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