I was digging through my folder of half-written fics (there are twenty-two separate fics in there, I kid you not) and found this, which is still only half-finished but what the hell, I'm posting it anyway.

Title: Ugly
Pairing: Er. Sort of Sai/Sakura? With background Naruto/Hinata.
Warnings: Sai. Being Sai. 'Nuff said. Aaaaaand I'm writing het, but it's awesome because it's Sai and Sakura. Well. Sort of.
Summary: “Hey, Sai, if you’ve got the hots for Sakura, why do you keep calling her ugly?”



Ugly

Sai had long ago learned to be wary of Sakura’s temper, largely because he could not predict its appearance.

Of course, he knew that mentioning “penis”, “ugly” or “Sasuke” within Sakura’s hearing would probably earn him a fist to the face, but all too often Sai would say something totally innocuous and still earn himself a short stay in the hospital. It was quite disconcerting.

He was having more luck learning what sort of comments would earn him a sigh and a small, affectionate – if occasionally worried – smile, however. Turning to Sakura with questions about normal social behaviour (assuming, of course, that they avoided the aforementioned trigger words) was one method. Offering to train with both Sakura and Naruto was another. Sai employed both methods regularly, as Sakura was a surprisingly good source of social information and a ninja should never pass up opportunities for training.

He still didn’t understand why Sakura got angry when he called her ugly, though. She was ugly. Sai had read books that listed in minute detail the criteria for female beauty, and Sakura had none of them. Her hands were rough from taijutsu and she had the blue chakra veins in her arms that all med-nin eventually developed. Her hair was too short and an unattractive colour. Her forehead was too big, her thighs too muscular, her demeanour too assertive, her nose too small, her clothing too revealing. Some of her mannerisms were feminine, Sai could admit, but they did not cancel out the rest. Why should such an obvious fact cause Sakura to become so angry?

Recently, however, Sai had developed another concern regarding Sakura’s ugliness. Sai knew from his books that a beautiful woman was graceful, polite, and demure. She would have long hair, eyes that weren’t acid green, and she definitely would not be predisposed to outbursts of homicidal violence. She would be delicate and refined and utterly useless as a shinobi, except perhaps as a honey trap. (The books disagreed on whether or not that was a good thing.)

Sakura was none of those things, so Sai did not understand why he sometimes got an erection around her.

The first time it happened, Sai dismissed it as a fluke caused by a change in his routine. He had resolved to masturbate nightly for the next week in order to relieve his body’s tension.

Despite his masturbation schedule, it happened again a little over two weeks later.

At that point, Sai decided he had not been paying enough attention to his levels of sexual tension, and had allowed them to build to the point where masturbation was not enough to relieve it. He had been a little surprised that tension had built up so quickly without his notice, but nonetheless he dutifully went to the ANBU-approved brothel tucked away in a little back corner of Konoha and made use of its services three nights in a row.

That helped for a time; however, three weeks later it happened again.

By then, Sai had noticed a pattern to his spontaneous erectile malfunctions. They always happened while training, and they always happened while Sakura was demonstrating her rather overblown strength (usually on a whimpering Naruto), her green eyes snapping, small pink mouth curved into a rather sadistic smile, slim body in graceful (powerful) motion—

Oh.

It appeared that thinking about Sakura could also induce an erection. Interesting.

And then there were the dreams. Sai did not dream. Or had not. He had heard of the phenomenon but never experienced it, which meant that he had not initially known what he was experiencing. The first time, Sai had woken from sleep at his usual time with lingering images of pink hair fanning over his skin and a hot, wet mouth engaged in fellatio on him, and had spent the next two hours performing all the genjutsu-dispelling strategies he knew until he realised it must have been that “dream” phenomenon. Subsequent “dreams” had left images of wet warmth around his cock and strong legs around his hips, fingers stroking across odd parts of his skin (what relevance to sex did a hand stroking his arm have? Yet Sai found it unaccountably arousing), even kisses, which Sai normally regarded as a waste of time.

And all with Sakura.

Sai had not been able to exorcise his odd thoughts with the Konoha brothel again, however, and there had been little time to think on it further as Pain attacked. Fighting, running and rebuilding had left little time for anything else.

Now, however, Sai had begun to wonder whether Sakura had directly caused his sudden erectile oddities. The last time she had used medical ninjutsu on him she had told him she was learning an experimental form of healing and his “stupid, male idiocy” had just earned both him and Naruto a place as her guinea pigs. It had certainly healed his broken wrist with a minimum of pain, but perhaps it had inadvertently altered his sexuality. Sai didn’t remember being attracted to ugly people before, after all. (Of course, Sai didn’t remember being attracted to anyone before, but that wasn’t the point.)

If Sakura had used medical jutsu on him, then Sai was not going to be able to undo it himself, or likely even detect it. So the best way to get rid of it would be to ask her outright.

Sai decided the most opportune time to do this would be during training with both her and Naruto. After all, Naruto had been a guinea pig for Sakura at the same time as Sai, so the logical thing to do would be to ask her while they were both around, so she could undo the jutsu’s effects on them both at once.

So it was that Sai casually said one sunny afternoon in Konoha, “Sakura, please undo whatever jutsu you have used to make me want to have sex with you.”

Sai watched dispassionately as Naruto made a choking sound and flailed, falling over his own feet face-first into the dirt. Sakura had stopped mid-motion and gone bright red, her lips trembling.

Naruto recovered first. He staggered onto his feet and blurted, “You – Sakura-chan – what the hell – Sai, are you – Sakura-chan would never!”

“She may have done it to you as well,” Sai told him.

Sakura made a noise like a boiling teakettle. “Sai,” she said, dangerously quiet. “What are you talking about?”

“Several months ago you used myself and Naruto as guinea pigs for an experimental medical jutsu,” Sai reminded her. “Shortly after I became unable to stop fantasising about having sex with you. I am willing to believe the effects may be inadvertent; I initially believed it was down to tension on my part, which I have attempted to remove through—”

“Stop!” Sakura screeched, then at a more normal volume, “Stop, Sai, please.” She started rubbing at her forehead with the tips of two fingers, eyes squinted shut. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Sai, that jutsu could not have caused you to ... want to ... er – anyway, it only works on bones! It can’t have affected you – that way!”

“I don’t know, don’t they call it a boner – ow, Sakura-chan!”

“Shut. Up. Naruto,” Sakura said through clenched teeth.

Naruto rubbed his head where Sakura had hit him and pouted, until a thought occurred to him and he said, “Hey, Sai, if you’ve got the hots for Sakura, why do you keep calling her ugly?”

“Because she is ugly,” Sai replied, and got hit in the face by what felt like half a mountain. When the black spots had cleared from his vision, he sat up and noted that he had flown approximately six metres from where he had been sitting a moment before. He also noticed that and Sakura and Naruto were involved in a heated argument. Or, rather, Sakura was screeching and Naruto was cringing.

Sai felt at his jaw and was relieved to find that it wasn’t broken. Sakura had very delicate control to go with her monstrous strength – Sai was well aware that if she’d wanted to, she could have decapitated him with that blow.

He got up, wobbling a bit, and walked back over to them. “Are you going to remove the jutsu?” Sai asked.

Sakura closed her eyes and began breathing deeply. It made her chest move in a rather interesting way, and – oh. Dear. Sai mentally added Sakura’s breasts to his list of things about her that could cause an unexpected erection; her breasts were particularly unexpected in this case, since according to Sai’s books they were far too small to be attractive.

He told her this. It would be useful for her to know that the symptoms were progressing.

Sakura’s eyes popped open, acid green gone fiery with anger again, which was not helping Sai’s erection. Naruto made a noise like a dying fish and started staring at Sakura’s chest – still heaving with the heavy breaths she was snorting through her nose – like her breasts were hypnotic. Which, Sai supposed, they were, in a way. It was taking a lot of effort not to stare at them.

Sakura was too busy glaring at him to notice where Naruto was looking, but she did notice when he said, “You’re wrong in the head, Sai! Sakura-chan has the best tits in— Ow!”

“I believe common consensus says Hinata has the best breasts in Konoha,” Sai told Naruto solemnly, looking away from Sakura’s breasts and down at where the blond was sprawled out on the dirt clutching his head.

Shaking out her fist, Sakura resumed glaring at Sai. “Sai, I’ve told you already that there is no jutsu,” she snapped. “If you’re having some sort of sexuality crisis that involves you fantasising about ugly people—” said with an interesting amount of venom, Sai noted “—then I don’t want to know. I’m not interested in what goes on in your head.” This said, Sakura turned on her heel and stomped off through the trees back towards Konoha.

Sai thought that last part was a blatant lie, considering how often Sakura asked him to explain himself, and also wondered at how he had been getting progressively more erect the angrier Sakura got.

Naruto made another odd noise from where he was still lying on the dirt. “You know, if you wanted to ask her out, you really did that the wrong way,” he told Sai.

Sai looked at him. “Ask her out?”

“Like on a date,” Naruto said, waving a hand in the air vaguely. “Flowers, dinner, stuff like that. And – heh heh heh – some mutual groping at the end, maybe.” He waggled his eyebrows. It looked particularly stupid from Sai’s vantage point. “Might ‘lift the jutsu’, y’know.”

Sai considered it from all angles, and could not find fault with Naruto’s suggestion. Perhaps all he did need to do was have sex with Sakura to cancel the jutsu’s effectiveness.

Or perhaps... Sakura did seem genuinely convinced no jutsu of hers was causing Sai’s problem. So far as Sai was aware, Sakura had been the only person in a position to put him under such a jutsu recently, and the only one with a potential motive (someone that ugly might feel tempted to artificially induce attraction, after all), so the only other option was that an enemy nin had breached Konoha’s defences in order to make Sai lust after Sakura, which was hardly likely. Although, if true, it meant they had bigger problems on their hands than Sai’s unique form of erectile dysfunction.

Regardless, if Sakura were telling the truth, then perhaps Sai had been wrong. Bodies were strange things, Sai knew, that reacted in odd ways. The first time Naruto had told Sai he was their teammate, for example, had caused an inexplicable warmth in Sai’s chest. This made no sense because Sai already knew he was their teammate, having been placed with them by the Hokage, so why would Naruto’s statement of a fact make him feel ... accepted, and closer to Naruto, Sakura and Kakashi?

However, their performance as a team had improved after that, so Sai’s body apparently knew more about some things than he did.

Perhaps something similar was the case with Sakura.

“How do you ‘ask someone out’?” Sai asked Naruto.

Naruto sat up and scratched his head. He had a look on his face that Sai could not quite describe – it was a little wary, and a little ... hurt, he decided. Although he could not fathom why.

Naruto scratched the back of his head, looking away. “Eheh ... with Sakura, I dunno,” he said. “I’ve been trying to ask her out for years.”

“I thought you were dating Hinata,” Sai said.

Immediately, Naruto brightened, looking back at Sai with a big grin. “Yeah, I am,” he said, that oddly hurt look gone as though it had never happened. “Hinata-chan’s amazing.”

“Does that mean you want to date Sakura as well as Hinata?” Sai asked.

Naruto frowned and flipped onto his feet. “I guess I did,” he said slowly. “But I think maybe it was just habit, wanting to date Sakura. Sakura’s amazing, too,” he said, giving Sai an oddly intent look. “You know that, right?”

“Yes,” Sai said without hesitation. ‘Amazing’ meant something surprising. It could also mean something bewildering and perplexing. Sakura was very definitely all of those. “So do you want to date Sakura?”

“I guess ... not,” Naruto said, looking a little surprised. “I mean, Sakura-chan will always be Sakura-chan,” he added hastily, which Sai thought was rather redundant. “But Hinata...” Naruto trailed off.

For the barest instant, Sai understood. Naruto’s bond with Sakura was obviously deep and long-standing, but the romantic feelings had all been on Naruto’s side, and even he could get worn down eventually. Hinata, on the other hand, had been prepared to sacrifice herself for Naruto because of feelings Naruto had not even known existed. To Naruto, that would have been a great and unexpected gift and had the rather obvious side effect of securing his affections for life.

“I understand,” Sai told him. “You and Hinata are annoyingly needy, so you suit each other very well.”

Naruto exploded in his face yelling at him not to talk about Hinata-chan like that, and hey, where did Sai get off saying he was needy? Sai ignored him, thinking. He had some books on dating among his collection; he’d bought them to find out how to recognise and turn down offers from other people, once he had been told that he’d managed to go on a few dates without realising.

It seemed research was in order, Sai thought, walking away from the still-spluttering Naruto.

*

Sai had a very strange dream that night. In it, he gave a half-naked Sakura bunch of chocolate roses, the petals coloured red with blood, and asked if she would go to the fair with him. Sakura pointed out they were already at the fair – and, magically, they were, surrounded by shinobi dressed as comrades Sai had seen die (Kiba had a spear in his chest, knocking his arm as he tried to eat dango, Ino standing next to him with her head under one arm, Shikamaru looking closer to a porcupine than a pineapple with needles sprouting from his back) – but Sakura still took the roses and pressed the blood-stained petals to her chest.

In the dream, Sakura’s nipples were the same colour as her hair. Sai was vaguely aware that this was unnatural, although he couldn’t remember why. He watched, fascinated, as the blood leached off the petals where they touched her skin, running in rivulets down her breasts and belly.

Then they were back on the training grounds, and Sakura threw the roses away. When Sai looked back up at her face, her eyes were poisonous with anger as she smiled and punched him—

Yes, it was fair to say that Sai had a very strange dream.

As was becoming the norm for things to do with Sakura, however, he woke from it with an erection.

[ TBC...? ]
probably not where the hell did this idea come from