"Sai," a sharp whisper. His black eyes looked up to meet the concerned green ones calling his attention. His blank face questioned her.

"Naruto won't be awake for at least a day longer. And that's only a fraction of what I'd normally guess because of his... abilities." The popping fire sent burnt tones streaking through her pink hair. Sai nodded and stood up, taking a deep breath.

"Shall we camp here until then, Sakura-sa... Sakura?" Sakura couldn't help but smile to herself at his incredible lacking in social skills. She followed suit, standing, too, and walking to stand beside him. She looked into the dark sky, admiring the stars silently.

"Yes, Sai," she started, "but I'm afraid our quarters will be slightly different." He cocked his head. "Naruto will be taking the single tent, and we will be sharing the double." He nodded, again. He looked down at the fire, the orange light illuminating his pale face.

"Then I shall set up ours, you go ahead and take whatever medical measures you need to. I think I'll get the rest of our supplies put up." He began to turn away when Sakura spoke again.

"It's fine, Sai, Naruto needs no more medical attention than I've already given him..." the last bit sounded wary, but she continued. "He is stable for the remaining portion of his unconsciousness. We both need to rest as soon as we can." Nodding seemed to be his signature.

"So I will set up our tent, anyway?" he inclined. She couldn't help but laugh. He responded with a smile.

"Yes, that will be great," she said, smiling. "I will set up his tent," she threw her thumb over her shoulder, towards Naruto, "and will join you shortly." He began to walk away, but stopped awkwardly, double-taking over his shoulder and then standing still.

"And the genjutsu didn't harm Naruto-kun severely?" he asked. Sakura shook her head, noticing the honorific.

"He's fine. Just going to be unconscious for at least 28 more hours. He kept it from the important parts of his brain, I'm so proud. He's just mentally strained," she sighed. It was completely dark outside now, the fire's orange glow was the only thing lighting up the camp grounds.

Sai seemed satisfied with the answer, turning to set up their tent. The light made him orange; he was so pale, just like a blank sheet of paper, waiting to be drawn on. She chuckled, liking the artistic analogy she'd come up with, it fit him.

After Sai gave her the single tent, she set it up easily around where Naruto was lying. She helped Sai finish the double tent, unrolling their bed-mats neatly in the dim light. Sai had offered to let Sakura have the tent for changing and he would outside. She appreciated the offer and accepted, thanking him.

Her pack sat harmlessly near the opening of the tent, and she reached for her night clothes. The shadows cast told her that Sai was changing, too. A light flush went across her face at the silhouette, but she ignored it and changed. She crawled to the opening flap and said through the cloth, "I'm done now, you can come in when you are,"

Sai lifted up the cloth with his hand; he was crouched down and wearing a black tank top and long, black pants. Sakura backed up to let him in, sitting on her mat, farthest from the entrance. Sai crawled in and sat cross-legged on his mat.

"I set up a few minor traps around the site," Sai said softly, "and put a weak genjutsu so that the fire seems invisible outside of this clearing." Sakura smiled.

"Thank you, Sai," she said. "I had set up a few to notify us if someone was approaching, but I hadn't thought of the genjutsu." Sai smiled back.

Sakura remembered when they had very first met, and Sakura learned about Sai's lack of emotion. In the two years since, he had learned a lot. But there was so much more to learn. Even she was baffled by her emotions. She felt sympathetic knowing that he'd wasted sixteen years of learning how to deal with emotions.

Thoughts of his rough-around-the-edges manners made her laugh and want to punch him. But mostly, she was proud of his development. She knew she could never do as well as he had. And she had to admit, him learning to smile was one of the best parts of knowing him. Every bit of his sincerity showed through when he smiled now, and it made her smile.

He finally got the nickname thing down, too, and used honorifics well. He was also a bit more reactive now, not to her or Naruto so much, but with other people. She guessed that since she and Naruto were close to him, he acted more like he felt. It still boggled her mind how he'd grown up.

"Sakura...?" Sai asked, breaking her reminiscing. "Are you okay?" he said, looking at her hard. She flushed, realizing that she must have been watching him the whole time.

"Y-yes, I'm fine," she replied, moving some object off of her bed. He raised and eyebrow in questioning, but remained silent. From the look on his face, she could tell he was thinking something over, and over, and over.

She stopped and looking consciously at him. He didn't relent his gaze. His expression began slightly troubling her, and she was convinced that her face probably looked about the same. "What is it?" she asked, shifting her sitting position. He blinked, but remained totally still and unchanged.

"I was... thinking," he said slowly, as if carefully picking each word. "About something... I read about," he finished.

She blinked, now blank herself. This could be bad, she thought, what if he read something about intimate relationships?

Sai moving closer told her that she was right. Actually, it screamed it. She put her hands in front of her, one gripping each of his shoulders.

"What did you read about?" she interrogated. He was silent. The dim light revealed nothing, nothing at all; it frustrated her.

"It said to not question yourself," he replied simply, grabbing a wrist with each of his hands. Sakura's heart began pounding as he removed her hands from him and leaned closer, pinning her hands on the ground behind her.

She was fully expecting him to try to kiss her, but he stopped a few inches from her face and scanned it lazily before looking her in the eye again. She sighed.

"Well?" She only said this out loud, but her face read, 'what are you waiting for?' Sai's gears were turning again, and finally he spoke.

"Although it said to have confidence," he started, "I don't believe an unrequited advance would be the wisest," and as with Sakura, a message was left on his face that read, 'especially with someone like you'. She smirked.

"I guess you don't know me as well as I thought," she started, sending a confused expression flying across his face. "I'm weak," she finished. He was silent, his gears turning again. Finally, some kind of new look fleetingly appeared on his face and he Leaned forward as far as he would go without their faces touching so that her back ended up flat on the ground.

He raised an eyebrow before making anymore advances. She smirked again and drew her knees up to his sides. Both his eyebrows raised at that point, and he looked like he had just remembered something very important.

There was something about the way he treated everything like it was class that she loved. He looked like he was trying to think of something to say, like he was going to ask her a question, but for once, she saw something she hadn't seen in him ever before: he was having trouble.

Usually he just looked like he was organizing his words. Now he looked like he couldn't think of them.

"According to the book, you just skipped several steps," he said, very matter-of-factly. She laughed quietly to herself.

"Don't think about it." she replied. "Where were we...?" she asked suggestively, to which Sai seemed to be having trouble thinking through. She knew emotion wasn't his forte, and as long as she wasn't into it, he was fine. But she loved messing up his plans, teaching him about people in ways that he wasn't planning to learn.

So, Sai leaned farther forward with resolve, his eyes closing as his lips were only a few breaths away from hers. He hovered over her mouth for a moment, as if thinking it all over again. Sakura bit her lip in anticipation. It was so different from any other guy. She assumed this is about the same it would be with a computer.

He finally set his lips against hers, very delicately. She closed her eyes as well, returning the kiss. There was that ever-present test feel, and she wondered for a moment what he might be thinking.

He pulled back for a moment, and Sakura remained still. She opened her eyes, to find him looking blatantly at her.

"Was that right?" he asked. She didn't smile or laugh, but it amused her, as always. Instead of an answer, she just craned her neck upward, kissing him again. She couldn't see, but she imagined his face; both eyebrows up, eyes and face as blank as always.

She was surprised when he responded, moving one of his hands to hold the back of her head, and the other one to support his weight better, and to release her hand that he had still been immobilizing from when she tried to stop him. Now that both of her hands were free, she wrapped her arms around his neck. He slowly slid his arm flat so that his body was touching hers.

Sakura smiled, and Sai did, too; both knew although neither were looking. She ran her fingers through his hair and started to kiss him more fervently; she didn't care if he knew what to do. He'd stop and ask if he didn't anyways, so what the hell.

Apparently he had done his homework.

They continued to kiss, more and more passionately by the second, and somewhere along the way, some tongue got involved. Sakura didn't care, this was the best mission she'd been on in months. Sai seemed to be enjoying it as far as she could tell, whether that just meant that it was educational or not.

Sai seemed to hesitate when she drew her knees closer to her and crossed her feet, having wrapped them around his sides. Sakura paused at his withdrawal, breathing more heavily than before, the air chilling her hot, damp lips.

"Sai," she breathed, "how much did that book teach you?" He moved his head beside hers, resting his forehead on the cloth of the tent floor. He was silent for a while, which she wasn't entirely surprised at, but when he spoke, she was thoroughly caught off guard.

"I don't remember," he replied breathily. He sounded as if he was having an out-of-body experience, or something.

"What...?" she replied. She wasn't sure what he meant.

"I don't remember what I read," he said, more assured of the words he was speaking now. She couldn't help it when a huge grin proceeded to cover her face. She let out a quiet giggle, having no idea where it was coming from, but being unable to keep it in.

She buried her face into his neck and continued to laugh quietly.

"Why am I amusing you?" he asked innocently, she guessed he was worried that he had done something wrong. She shook her head into him.

"You're not doing anything wrong," she assured him, moving her hands lower, to have a good hold on him. He mirrored the movement, turning to his side to avoid crushing her.

"Then what is making you so..." he started, being unable to finish. She kissed his neck where she had her face buried.

"I don't know," she answered. She had moved the leg that Sai had rolled over on, it was now wrapped around his free leg. She also put the arm under pressure to the side of his face, wrapping her hand around the back of his head again.

She pulled her face back and looked him in the eyes. He was staring back. He looked utterly disheveled. It was a sight for sore eyes, in her opinion. She loved his methodical thinking, but being the cause of its dysfunction was something entirely more pleasing to her.

He had nothing to say and a million things to ask and no way of saying them, but it was okay. Sakura didn't need any words. "Can I...?" he asked quietly, moving his face forward. She nodded and completed the gap for him.

This kiss was calmer, but entirely as passionate as before. She was getting chills, she would have never thought Sai could do this to anyone, much less her.

But she wasn't complaining. She pushed herself into him so that he rolled onto his back, and she straddled him. He stopped kissing her. He didn't say anything but the blank look on his face that had returned was enough to tell her what he was thinking.

"No," she said, as if she were answering a question he had spoken, "I'm just mixing things up." She smirked and leaned forward to kiss him again. All this kissing, she thought. What was she even doing it for? Naruto was only ten feet away, and it's not like he didn't deserve this a thousand times more than Sai, and Sasuke, and anyone else she could think of.

But nothing seemed to really stop her. She was always one to give into temptation. Like she'd said herself, she was weak.

Sai set his hands on her hips as her hands knotted in his hair again, this was by far her favorite position. Sai pushed his luck and slid his fingertips under her night shirt. When she showed no signs of stopping him, his hands slid up her back and grabbed her shoulders, his arms wrapped around her small torso.

She let out a shaky sigh in the middle of their kiss, breaking their lip-lock, and Sai jumped on the opportunity-- he pulled her shirt from the bottom, where it'd gathered from his exploration of it, and quickly pulled it off over her head. She initially shivered but only drew closer to him in an effort to stay warm.

"Then you, too," she demanded, thrusting her hands to the bottom of his tank top, yanking it up. Sai obliged, and soon it was Sakura's skirt being discarded. After rolling around some and flipping about, Sai had ended up over her, on his hands and knees, with her on her back, holding his shoulders.

He began kissing her neck, and at first she thought nothing of it. "Wait, Sai, what the hell kind of books have you been reading??" she demanded, and he pulled back to look at her.

After some thought, he said, "The library has a wide range of literature..."

She wasn't convinced.

"Okay, what have you really been reading?" she asked again, and this time he took a bit longer to think.

After a lot of mental deliberation, he eventually gave it up and confessed. With eyes that seemed woeful, as if tattling on an academy buddy, he said, "Naruto-kun has some interesting things under his mattress."

She scoffed. Of course, she thought.

"Well, do me a favor," she said, turning him over and mounting him again. He said nothing but waited patiently for her to finish. She leaned in and kissed him again, he returned it, and they let it go on for a few seconds before they needed to breathe.

As she panted to catch her breath, she sighed, "Go snoop through Naruto's things more often."