Work Text:
Deidara tilts his head at the sliver of ink peeking out from Kankuro’s sleeve. He’d been sitting here thinking of ways he might turn things around following his release from police custody. Just because his kumicho decided their clan is supposed to play nice with the Suna and Konoha clans doesn’t mean he has to. Deidara’s always been one to go his own way. He thrives on spontaneity. But the ink that’s caught his eye has turned his thoughts to different things.
“That’s Sasori’s work,” he says, not giving a shit if he interrupts the directives of the Suna clan kumicho, “hn.”
Kankuro’s makeup-lined eyes widen before he pulls up his jacket sleeve, massaging the art as if he’s protecting it from Deidara’s view. “Yeah. It is.”
“As I was saying,” Gaara-sama continues.
The rest of his words are drowned beneath Deidara’s louder thoughts. Deidara already knows what he’s supposed to do on this job. It’s the same thing he always does - blow shit up. He doesn’t care what trivial details these Suna clan Yakuza have to reveal to him about what’s in this cargo hold they’re taking for both themselves and the Akatsuki clan with aid of his explosives expertise. He’s more interested in the intricate lines of the scorpion residing on Kankuro’s inner wrist. There’s no denying that they were chiseled with one of Sasori’s needles. Deidara scoffs to himself and shakes his head as he reminisces on their recurring arguments. Somehow, it seems, Sasori has immortalized himself with his art. He’s been gone nearly a year now, yet Deidara feels as if his mentor and friend is right here in that scorpion Deidara watches with his one good eye. He remembers the day he first saw Sasori’s impressive work as clearly as if it was yesterday.
He’d been tired of the expectations set out for him then. Corporate life was all laid out on a silver fucking platter like it was meant to be his perfect life, but it was ugly in Deidara’s eyes. It was too straightforward, too perfect. It had been the clearest choice he’d ever made when he decided to rebel in a way he could never take back. Of course, he couldn’t get away with it in Tokyo. His relatives would’ve known all about it with their paid lackeys following Deidara after school and on his way to school. He’d ditched them at Shibuya, switching trains and abandoning that dead weight in pursuit of his freedom.
He’d always known he would be an artist, even before irezumi.
He’d found the place in Kyoto. The shop had been only a hole in the wall then, its curbside crawling with rebellious Japanese teenagers with bleach-blonde hair just like Deidara’s. The entrance had been guarded by a man with a shaved head in a black suit built just as sturdy as the brick wall he leaned against. That should’ve struck Deidara as strange, but he’d taken it in stride, more naive back then than he is now. Inside, what he’d found was an oasis.
Where the outside world in the city life he’d known in Japan was structured - black and white, correct and incorrect - this place looked like the end result of that structure being blown to shit. It had been the most beautiful thing Deidara had ever seen in his young adult life with its splashes of bold colors on the walls and its loud heavy metal music blaring. The people inside these walls had been even more of a sight to behold. That was when Sasori had first caught Deidara’s eye.
The vibrant red of the tattooist’s dyed hair had drawn Deidara’s eye straight to him as he’d pinned his client down with a knee. That hadn’t been just any client, either. The man already heavily decorated in ink had to be Yakuza. Sasori’s deep concentration on his chiseling had given Deidara time to take a long look at him and what he was doing.
Irezumi had always intrigued him. There was a mystery behind them - a beauty in their mere existence rather than solely the appearance of them. Even today, it isn’t the colorful dragons or cherry blossoms or winding lines that draws Deidara’s eye to every hint of ink protruding from a sleeve or neckline. The true beauty of ink is in the mystery of it. The appeal of wondering what is up someone’s sleeve only to have that big reveal fascinate the beholder when the time is right — that makes Deidara feel the explosion of excitement he yearns for time and again.
Sasori has never seen it this way.
Deidara had wondered about his tattoos when he’d first approached the tattoo artist’s chair. He’d been young and inexperienced, thinking there was nothing wrong with interrupting the needle work being prodded into the ink-covered hip of a gaunt man whose skin was decorated with wrinkles as much as with irezumi. Sasori had looked up slowly from his work, giving Deidara a withering glare behind thick lashes. Deidara’s breath had been taken away. He’d never expected to find a tattoo artist working for Yakuza who could look so young and soft-featured. Sasori was older than him, and even that day Deidara knew he’d had to be older, but that hadn’t dampened the instinct to look at the youthful artist as his equal.
When Sasori had answered Deidara with snark and dismissal before returning to his work, Deidara had found himself even more intrigued about the ink that had to be hidden beneath Sasori’s pant legs and cable-knit sleeves. He’d balked aloud, too petulant and proud to openly accept the complete lack of regard from Sasori and his client who’d huffed a laugh and gone back to closing his eyes and resting his head while Sasori worked on his dragon. Internally, Deidara had a mind alight with wonder.
Sasori had lit a fuse in him. Where he’d entered the parlor in search of his first tattoo, Deidara had now started speculating on all of the possible images displayed across the walls and which ones of those he might find if he were to lift the soft hem of Sasori’s sweater. In the minutes that had elapsed while that old man’s irezumi had been finished, Deidara had imagined shoulder blades painted with an elaborate scene of sand dunes, wooden figures on a defined chest, and down the arms, lost loved ones and tributes to tools of the very art that had made the ink designs possible.
“Now,” Sasori had said as he’d turned from scrubbing his hands clean in his wash basin, “you.”
Deidara had quirked a smile and stood upright. “Me.”
He’d gestured with supine forearms, raising his virgin skin to Sasori’s attentive gaze. Sasori hadn’t been much of a talker in the time Deidara had observed him, but Deidara was willing to bet he’d get plenty of response out of him when he started the talking.
“You’re rude, Kozo,” Sasori had snapped, sneering at the pale skin.
“Yeah, well,” Deidara had said, brushing his long bangs back from his eyes to bare his smile to Sasori, “sorry to piss you off. But I came here for a tattoo. And you’re an artist.”
“Your point?” Sasori had said hostilely as he’d turned to rearrange his ink bottles.
Deidara had been used to taking liberties. Being raised as a rich kid under the umbrella of a corporation like Tsuchi Technologies really bolsters a guy’s confidence. So he’d felt no hesitation when he’d decided to plop into Sasori’s chair while his back was turned. The tattoo artist had looked up at him with disgust from his position kneeling beside the chair. Sasori’s last client had left the leather warm for Deidara, the seat welcoming. Deidara had simply grinned down at the evil look Sasori had given him and exposed his arms to the artist’s eyes again.
“I was thinking the arms,” he’d said, slowing as he’d become pensive while recalling the tattooing ordeal he’d just witnessed and his desire still to see Sasori’s ink, “but maybe…”
It would be better to conceal. He’d wanted to give a big fuck-you to his old man and all the corporation snobs who’d thought they were mentoring him for a future they didn’t know he didn’t want, but he’d seen the art in keeping it in the shadows now. Better to conceal the fuck-you while still blasting the message entirely out of sight. Deidara wanted his first tattoo in a place anyone attentive to him should have seen it, but otherwise would not see it. To this day, Deidara’s blood relatives and people he runs beneath him now in the company have never noticed the matching tattoos he’d started on this day.
Deidara had turned his hands over, opening his palms to Sasori. “Palms.”
“Excuse me?” Sasori had sneered.
“Mouths actually,” Deidara had elaborated cheekily. “One on each palm.”
“You want mouths on your palms?”
“Not big ones,” Deidara had said, drawing a circle in one palm with his fingertip. “I want them hidden from view unless I show them to someone.”
“Then,” Sasori had said, narrowing his eyes and cocking his bright red head of hair at Deidara, “why would I want to tattoo them? No one would see my art. They wouldn’t even be worth beholding. Mouths?”
“Mouths,” Deidara had said, becoming determined as he’d leaned forward in the chair. “And they would be worth it because the beauty is not in the permanence of the design. It’s in what isn’t revealed.”
“Oh?” Sasori had snorted, turning to his inks. “You’re one of those.”
Deidara had grinned as he’d watched Sasori set out his tools - fresh new chisels of bright bamboo, bottles of red, black, and white ink, latex gloves - and set his eyes on Deidara’s open blank canvases of palms. He’d realized this was going to hurt. Even without Yakuza running around in his family’s company, he’d been aware of the painful stigma attached to traditional tattooing. Deidara had thought he’d been ready to endure both hands in one night.
Sasori had yanked Deidara’s left hand forward painfully. “This one then.”
“One?” Deidara had scoffed. “Didn’t you hear me, hn? I want both hands done.”
“I’m not deaf,” Sasori had said, narrowing his gray eyes at Deidara, “but you’re not going to pull off healing from two hands in one sitting. You need to use them, don’t you, dumbass?”
“Hn.” Deidara had sniffed, allowing Sasori to trace the lines of his palm with gloved hands and a blunt marker. “Do you talk to all your clients this way? What’s your name? Maybe I should report you to your boss.”
“Sasori,” Sasori had said curtly before taking a bamboo chisel and dipping it in black ink. “And feel free. The boss can go fuck himself.”
When Deidara had opened his mouth to reply, that reply had died on his lips, never to be recalled again. It had disappeared with a hiss as Deidara had felt sharp pain blossom in the center of his hand. Before the pain had let up, a rapid succession of more of the same sharp pains had followed in its wake. Sasori’s prodding had never let up, just like his taunting never let up for Deidara in all the years he’d lived.
Deidara had bitten his tongue then, both literally and figuratively. It wasn’t until years later that he’d begun debating with Sasori, insisting that as skillful as his art was, no one cares as much for what Sasori marked into Yakuza skins as they do the pleasure of hiding and unveiling it. His mark, or as he’d liked to call it, his immortal work, had been and always would be in the shadows. The shadows being juxtaposed with the moment of the reveal is the true art behind irezumi. Sasori never understood that. Or rather, he would insist until the day he’d died that Deidara was the one who didn’t understand and nothing could eclipse the beauty of his color choices and lines of artwork. As Deidara watches the hem of Kankuro’s sleeve fall over the pincers of Sasori’s scorpion, he decides wistfully that he’ll let Sasori win this argument. He’d let Sasori win anything if it would bring him back.
“Deidara,” Kankuro says.
Deidara blinks, shifting his gaze from Kankuro’s sleeve to his face to see an incredulous look within those purple lines of makeup. Kankuro’s handiwork has nothing on Sasori’s artistry, but Deidara realizes now that Sasori has left a notable mark on this clan with his irezumi. Killing Suna’s people would be like killing Sasori. His art on skins of his past clients is Sasori, surviving for as long as they do. Deidara takes a deep breath. When he blows it out, along with it goes every argument he’s ever had about Sasori’s eternal beauty theory and about his willingness to take out these people responsible for his death.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Gaara-sama asks, giving Deidara that same incredulous look.
Deidara smirks. “Of course, hn!”
He shoots to his feet, wasting no time collecting his ammo. He may have surrendered to Sasori’s art form prevailing in terms of irezumi, but there is one art form where he will never be outdone. The Suna clan is ready to break into their shipping container, which first means Deidara needs to cause a distraction. He will create the grandest explosion that dock has ever seen. It will be fleeting and brilliant, just as bold and bright as Sasori and all the fine ink work he’s left behind as his legacy.