Orange

"Hey, dumbass."

"Yes, sempai?"

Just another mission, another break from their travels in the clearing of an endless forest. Tobi kneeled before the heap of twigs and bark, a match and tinder in either of his hands. Deidara sat cross-legged in the weave of long grass and wheat behind him.

"What's with the fucking mask?"

Not taking mind of his partner's curt choice of words, he smiled brightly behind the anonymity of his porcelain veil. He learned over the past couple of weeks that the replacement of his given name with some sort of imaginative, degrading label was mostly done out of habit. Things were still somewhat questionable between the two of them (unstable was more like it), but Tobi shrugged it off with a hidden grin, and Deidara had learned to muddle along and deal as well.

As much as his sempai liked to believe so, Tobi wasn't entirely an idiot. Deidara-sempai didn't always mean what he said.

"What about it?"

"It's orange, that's what. Un."

The day never came to a close until the clay-artist threatened to blow his sorry ass sky-high, un.

In layman's terms, he really wanted to kill him.

"I know. I guessed I've just always liked orange. It's different, you know, sempai? Not as deep as red, not as bright as yellow, and not as dark as green or blue. It's perfect in it's own way."

And yet, he was still alive.

And not that it needed noting, but his tush was still entirely intact, also.

"I couldn't care about the color itself. You're just a walking target, is what I'm trying to say, un. Anyone, a shinobi or a hunter-nin, could pick your stupid face out in a crowd, and that would be the story of you."

Tobi was no idiot.

He felt that Deidara-sempai did not wish him dead anytime soon.

"That's fine with me, sempai." His smile grew against the inside of his mask.

"What a retard, un. I hope someone does kill you. Honestly, you'd think the Leader would flay pansies like you alive for even looking at him. But he just up and intiates you. Christ..." And his mumbling continued on like that.

Deidara-sempai didn't always mean what he said.

"I am still alive, Deidara-sempai."

Someday, he reasoned, being the artist that he was, he would see that orange wasn't all that bad.

Written for sharingank because I luffs her so.