Pairings: NarutoSai

This is a double first-person point of view story. In other words, some of it is told by Naruto, and some of it is told by Sai.

Naruto

Sai

The Us-Them Complex
by jam2599

“Get the fuck out!”

Sai blinked at me, his eyes not exactly focused on my face, and he shut the door behind him. I glared at him. “What the fuck are you doing!” I shouted as he leaned back against the door.

He gave me the ‘teacher-talking-down-to-the-student’ look and asked, “You want me to untie you, don’t you? Or is the person who did this going to come back soon, and you would like to remain like that for them?”

Oh, dear god, he’s crazy. No normal person would be able to react like this.

I tore my eyes away from him and stared at the wall on my left side, hoping that he’d have the decency to ignore my erection, or at least to not talk about it. “Yeah, sure, just do it fast!” I snapped at him, my face burning. God damn it, why did HE have to see me like this? I’m going to catch shit for this for weeks…months…maybe longer…

He walked over to the bed and leaned across me to untie my right wrist. I glanced up at his face and I realized that he wasn’t smiling like I thought he’d be. Instead, he looked…troubled.

Sai’s eyes found mine then and I glared at him on reflex. He smiled then, but it still wasn’t the smug smile I was used to. The smile faded and he walked around the bed to start untying one of my ankles. I began to untie my other wrist.

“Naruto,” Sai said suddenly. He didn’t look up from the rope around my ankle, and he continued to work calmly.

I returned my attention to my own knot. “Yeah?” I asked, wishing he wouldn’t say anything or make a big deal out of my predicament.

Sai kept his eyes down. “I can take care of you, you know.”

I narrowed my eyes as I freed my wrist. “What?” I snapped at him. Stupid cryptic Sai.

“I can suck you off.”

And, as if nothing strange had been said, he started to untie the last knot.

Something welled up inside of me. Fury, anger, yeah, there were THOSE things, but something else too. So many things ran through my head right then…I wanted to shout at him, to grab him, to hurt him, to find some way to get it through his head that I wasn’t that way, that I didn’t appreciate being harassed by him all the time, that that was TOO far…I stared at him, and my hands began to shake.

I wanted to hurt Sai; for the first time, I genuinely wanted to hurt him.

As I tried to find some way to express these feelings to Sai, because I really, really didn’t want to put up with that crap anymore and it seemed like that was a good time to tell him, he finished untying my ankle and he sat on the bed, not close enough to me to have infuriated me if I was actually dressed. He faced the wall, and laid his hands in his lap calmly.

“We’ll never have to talk about it again. You won’t have to reciprocate, and I won’t go any farther than that. We don’t have to kiss. You don’t have to like me. Just, if you want me to, I will.”

I stared at Sai, blown away. Words finally found there way from my brain to my vocal chords, and the first thing I said was, “What the FUCK?”

Sai turned around and blinked at me as I got off the bed. “Naruto?” he asked softly, his brow furrowing.

My clothes! I found my wonderful, wonderful clothes on the floor, where that Aruki girl left them, GOD DAMN HER WHOEVER SHE WAS, and I pulled my boxers on with all of my drunken grace. I kept my back to Sai, silently fuming, still unable to talk to Sai, and my face burned. I started to think of other places I could look for work, now that Sai would fire me…

Shit, I should have known it would come to this, seeing as how he was always hitting on me, and how he always wanted me to be around…

I spun around to look at Sai, to make sure he wasn’t about to try anything, and I found that he had his back to me again.

I suddenly felt guilty, but I hadn’t done anything wrong, so this just made me feel even angrier. My rage overtook me and I leapt onto the bed, tackling Sai and pinning him down by his shoulders.

He blinked back up at me and smiled as if he was enjoying the attack. “I knew you would probably say no, but I just wanted to offer. I know you don’t like me.”

“No shit I don’t like you, you fucking fag!” I shouted, pushing him harder against the bed. I’d forgotten how easily he bruised then, and I held him down in a death grip, my furious eyes boring into his cool eyes.

Sai’s smile dropped from his face. “Well, then that’s that. I won’t offer you that again. I didn’t know that you had a problem with the fact that I was gay, though.”

I DON”T have a problem with it, but I felt like shit for saying that to him. He knew that I was drunk, and that my ex-best friend was gay, and hell, I knew that Sai was gay from the first time that I saw him and I’d never really said anything like that before, but…but he….

I lowered my face. “I don’t give a shit about that! It’s what you…that’s too fucking far!” I shouted, pushing myself away from him and standing over him, next to the bed. “Like…” I turned around and threw my hands up in the air. “Never mind. It’s you, so there’s no use explaining it, because you still won’t think that you’ve done anything wrong.”

“I know I did something wrong.” Sai said softly.

I spun back around to see him looking at me apologetically. “I really did,” he continued. “Well, I knew you wouldn’t like it, but I hoped you would.”

“That doesn’t make ANY god damn sense!” I shouted back. He nodded and sighed.

I knew it. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get it through to him. This is just the way that Sai is, and I can’t expect anything else from him.

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I nodded and sighed. Naruto was still fuming, but he’d calmed down considerably in those few moments of silence. He was clearly inebriated, but I’d come to expect that and it wasn’t something that I minded anyway.

“Well,” I said, trying to make peace, “would you like to return to the party now?”

He stared at me for a moment before bringing his hand to his forehead, showing that the alcohol had really started to take its toll. “No, I feel like shit. Let’s go back to the hotel…I’ll just call up Sasuke later when I’m not trashed.”

Naruto stood there for a while longer, holding his head in his hands, so I decided to take charge. I stood up and walked over to him, making sure to leave a little distance between us so that he wouldn’t think that I was trying to invade his personal space. “Do you have the keys?” I asked him, knowing full well that he did.

He pulled his hands away from his face and started to pat his jacket down, looking for the keys. When he found them, he handed them to me, and we just looked at each other for a moment.

I had gone too far.

I could see it in his eyes—how he did not trust me, how he expected my next move to be just as bad as my last one. Naruto has never had a high opinion of me, and I know there are several good reasons for that, reasons that I’ve found over the years after talking to other people and receiving…feedback.

This hurts me more than anything in the world, because I know I deserve this mistrust. I have no desire to hurt, scare, or manipulate him.

Naruto means too much to me, for me to want to use him like that.

I took the keys and smiled at him. “I’ll go wait in the car while you say goodbye to your friends.”

He looked a little surprised, but he rubbed the back of his neck and let out a breath he’d been holding. “Sure,” Naruto replied, “just don’t get kidnapped on your way out.”

I nodded and left him in the room.

I caught some looks on the way out. I would not have noticed but for the fact that I was looking for Sasuke in the crowd. I had wanted to talk to him again, but I knew that I had at least a few years ahead of me so I decided that it would be better to leave him alone for now.

He’d search me out on his own.

When I left the building, I realized that I didn’t remember where Naruto had parked the rental car. The car key contained a panic button, though, and I realized right then that I had never before had the pleasure of setting off a car’s alarm system.

So, of course, I pressed the panic button.

It only made sense.

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After I left the room, I looked around for Sasuke and Sakura. I found them chatting up Hinata together, as expected.

Damn, are they dating now?

I’ll ask them later. It wasn’t a good time; I was stressed out enough as it was, after talking to the psychopath.

Sakura saw me first, and she waved me over. Sasuke nodded at me coolly, and when Hinata turned around she covered her mouth with her hands and her eyes went wide.

I rolled my eyes. Yeah, I get it, I work for Sai and she wants his damned autograph, right?

“Naruto!” Hinata shouted. To my surprise, she hugged me, and it wasn’t one of those girly hugs…hell, it was a NICE hug.

Did I know her back in high school or something?

After standing still for an awkward second, I shrugged it off and patted her on the back. “Hinata!” I shouted over the loud music. “It’s so good to see you!”

She pulled away from me and smiled broadly. “Really? I’m glad to see you, too!”

Damn, one surprise after another. I didn’t think anyone would have remembered me after high school, at least not in a good way that would make them want to see me again.

Sasuke tapped me on the shoulder. “Hinata’s cousin, Neji, is going to participate in the National tournament in a few weeks. You remember Neji, right?”

“Yeah!” I shouted, turning back to Hinata. “Wow, Neji’s THAT good? I mean, I DID kick his ass once back in high school…”

She smiled. “Yeah, and I have an extra ticket!”

Huh?

Hinata blushed and she covered her face for a moment before continuing. “I mean, Neji gave me two tickets, so I could bring a d-date, and I want you to come if you’re not busy!”

I stared at her. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Sakura covering her mouth and giggling. Sasuke watched me calmly, waiting for my answer.

I shook myself out of my stupor and I took Hinata’s hands. “Sure, I’d like to go!” I shouted over the music. “I’ve never seen a real match before, you know, not like the high school ones!”

Hinata’s face lit up. “O-okay!” she shouted back, and she froze for a moment before opening up her purse and pulling out, you guessed it, a business card. “Just say your name is Naruto,” she said after I looked the card over. “You should be able to get through!”

I put the card in my pocket with Sakura’s and Sasuke’s, and I smiled back. “Great! It’s a date, then!”

She nodded. “Yeah! I can’t wait!”

We stared at each other like idiots and then, I remembered Sai.

“Shit!” I shouted right into Hinata’s face like the drunken bastard that I was. “Uh…” I looked at Sakura and Sasuke, who stared back at me as if to say, ‘do-not-curse-at-the-girl-who-just-asked-you-out-with-your-alcohol-breath’ and I blurted out, “I need to go! Sai’s waiting for me!”

Sasuke laughed. “Chill out! It’s not like he’s going to get…KIDNAPPED…if you make him wait for a moment!”

“Oh!” Sakura shouted. “Maybe he will! Sasuke has a few stalkers himself….”

My eyes widened. “Oh shit!” I shouted. I waved at Hinata and then I ran from the party.

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The alarm went off beautifully, and I found the car in twenty seconds. The miracle of electronic car keys.

The only problem with this strategy was that four security guards from the building Sasuke was renting found my car in twenty-two seconds, right after I had dropped the keys while trying to open the driver’s side door.

“Freeze!” one of them shouted. He drew his gun on me. “Put your hands up in the air!”

I complied, of course, and I waited for the next order.

“Hey,” another security guard said, “isn’t that Sai?”

“Who’s Sai?” another asked.

“Sai, the actor?” the first security guard asked, though I didn’t seem to be a part of the conversation.

I nodded. “Yes, and I was just trying to get into my car,” I said over the alarm. I decided that that was probably all the other information they needed, so I bent over to pick up the keys and I turned off the alarm.

The first security guard put his gun away. “So, you used the panic button to find your car?”

“Yes,” I said. “My friend drove the car over here, but he’s drunk right now, so I offered to drive for him.”

He blinked at me. “So this friend…where is he?”

“He’s still inside. I offered to wait for him in the car.”

The security guard frowned. “Well, do you have the receipt for the rental?”

I realized that I didn’t know what he was talking about. Naruto is the one who always thinks about things like that; even if the receipt was in the car, I wouldn’t have known what it looked like.

I shook my head. “My friend knows where it is. He should be here soon, though. Would it be alright for you to wait for him?”

I don’t like to be suspected of crimes that I haven’t committed, or things that I haven’t done in general. That situation did not sit well with me, and I didn’t know what I would have done if I couldn’t convince the security guards that I had not stolen the keys from someone at the party and tried to take their car.

As the security guard opened his mouth to reply, my drunken assistant walked past him and the other security guards, staring at them in confusion, before glaring at me. “What’s up? Do you need me to tell you how to get in a car?” he asked.

Naruto looked tired, and a little out of breath. I stared at him for a moment before making a point of ignoring his question and instead asking, “Do you have the receipt for the car rental?”

He gave me a look, then took the keys from my hand and opened the passenger-side door. After searching the glove compartment for a moment, he pulled out a few papers and gave them to me.

The security guard immediately took the papers out of my hand. “Who is this….Uzumaki Naruto?” he asked, looking at me over the paper.

Naruto frowned and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, opening it to show his ID. “That’s me, and this is my rental. Is there a problem?”

The security guard looked from Naruto’s ID to the papers for a moment before handing the receipt back to Naruto. “No, young man,” he said, touching the tip of his cap as he walked away with the other officers. “Sorry for the trouble, and be sure to drive safely.”

Naruto glared at them as they walked away before handing the keys back to me. I watched him get in the car silently before I walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door for myself. Naruto fumbled with his seatbelt in the dark and I helped him close the buckle.

He froze then, and stared at me. I pulled my hand away as soon as the buckle was clasped and I put the key in the ignition, not taking the time to buckle my own seatbelt. Naruto slumped back in his chair and closed his eyes.

Neither of us said anything on the drive back to the hotel. I turned on the radio and found a rock station, just to cover up the silence.

If Naruto was afraid of my driving, he didn’t say anything. That night was actually the first drive I had taken in a few years, but the roads were rather empty at that time of the night so I didn’t have much trouble getting back to the hotel.

When I pulled into our parking spot at the hotel, Naruto sat up quickly and unbuckled his seat belt as if to make sure that I wouldn’t try to do it for him. He got out of the car and slammed his door shut before I had even opened mine, and I sat in the car for a moment before leaving as well. I closed my door softly and I followed him back to our room, making sure to stay a few steps behind him.

Well, I guess that that night was a learning experience for me.

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I washed my hands as soon as we got back to the room.

Sai TOUCHED me when he helped me with my seatbelt.

I’d thought that I could let the whole ‘blowjob’ thing go, but he just kept picking at me, and he got close again, and there are some things that I can’t stand for. One of those things is Sai’s love of bothering the HELL out of me.

I heard him enter the bedroom while I was drying my hands. He stood in the doorway of the bathroom and watched me for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” Sai finally said. I put my hands on the counter and stared at the sink, waiting for him to finish. He didn’t move for a moment, as if he was waiting for me to say something.

Sai was my boss.

We really weren’t friends. We didn’t like each other. We weren’t civil with each other.

So I don’t know why the next thing that came out of my mouth was, “Thanks.”

It hurt me to say that, and I felt like a little of my pride left me then, and like my tongue had betrayed me, because I had NOT forgiven him, and I wouldn’t forget anything that crazy bastard pulled that night.

Sai nodded and he left the doorway. I washed my face and left the bathroom to grab a pair of pajamas.

When I came back into the room, Sai was watching some variety show, sitting on his bed with his legs stretched out in front of him, one hand in his lap and the other holding the remote. His expression was completely neutral, the way that I was used to seeing it.

I threw myself down onto my own bed and turned over so that I was laying on my side, facing away from him. The television lit up the entire room, and I watched the light play on the wall I was facing.

I pulled my blanket over my body and turned onto my back in time to see Sai turn off the television. He turned off the light next and settled back down onto his bed.

“Goodnight, Naruto,” Sai told me in his soft voice. I nodded and closed my eyes.

I wish that I had never slept that night.

I think that I started to dream as soon as I closed my eyes, because the first thing that I did in my dream was get out of the bed in our hotel room. Sai was gone, and there was only one bed in the room. I remembered that I was supposed to go to my high school reunion…yeah, I was just dreaming about stuff from the day before, and I should have realized that it was a dream because I kept thinking, ‘Didn’t I already go to that shit?’ but, of course, I kept doing what my dream wanted me to do.

I drove to the reunion in my rental car, and I don’t remember drinking anything but I know that I felt drunk when I got to my old school. Sakura and Sasuke met me when I arrived, but when I tried to talk to them Sasuke put his arm over Sakura’s shoulder and started to kiss Sakura’s neck.

I stared at them and they stared back, as if nothing had happened, and I pushed Sasuke as hard as I could before stomping into the school gym. They followed me and started to yell at me, and when I tried to run from them they caught me and shut me in a closet. I banged on the door, but no one answered, and I couldn’t hear anything.

After a few minutes of trying to beat down the door, I turned around and found a naked guy in there with me. He had black hair and pretty black eyes and soft lips and he was only a little taller than me, or so it looked when he walked over to me and stood face to face with me. My body froze and I fell backward, and I was no longer in an imaginary closet in my old school’s gym.

I looked around and found that I was back in the room I use at Sai’s place, and my body was still frozen. Sai climbed onto the bed and I realized that we were both naked now, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him; I wanted to see the things that I didn’t want to see, and I wanted to do the things that I didn’t want to do.

He didn’t smile at me. Instead, he crawled over to me and whispered, “Naruto,” and it was the sexiest thing I’d ever heard.

Sai kissed me and I wanted it, and I wanted more, too.

I touched his face and he pulled away. I looked at his body, the body I’d seen when he sat on his hotel bed naked while he was waiting for me to bring him a towel, while I traced his neck and his back with my hands.

He leaned in and whispered into my ear, “So, you didn’t count the bills I gave you?”

I stared at him in confusion. Of course I counted the bills! I’m not retarded after all! I didn’t know what he was talking about but he had no right to assume that I hadn’t counted the damn bills!

Sai smiled. “You counted them, all right.”

I nodded. “Don’t you ever fucking think that I didn’t count the bills. I knew what you gave me, Sai, you fucking four-eyes.”

I’ve said a lot of things in my dreams that don’t make sense. I once dreamt about failing a math test, and all the questions on the test were related to ramen ingredients…and then, when I tried to hand the test in to my teacher, they asked my how many baseball bats it took to fill a ramune before Christmas.

So I was just satisfied to hear Sai repeat, “You counted them, all right.”

I kissed him this time, and it felt good, even though it was gross, or maybe because it was gross. Now that he’d admitted that he was wrong, and all of that was cleared up, I couldn’t take my attention away from his body. Sai was perfect, and he was what I needed.

I grabbed his shoulder and pushed his face down into my lap. He smiled at me before taking my cock into his mouth, and I thrust back up as hard as I could, grabbing the back of his head as my eyes squeezed shut.

It felt like heaven.

I woke up with a start. My breathing was ragged and my bed was a mess. I slipped my hand down past my sheets and my pants and I found that my cock was just as hard in reality as it had been in my dream.

My body started to shake when I heard Sai turn in his sleep in the bed across the room. I ripped the sheets off my body and stumbled into the bathroom, where I tore off my clothes.

As I started the shower, I saw myself in the mirror and I was disgusted by how turned on I was. I’m a grown man, and I know that it’s normal to be turned on by strange things now and then, or to have fetishes, but I never thought that I would be one of those guys…

I’m not gay.

I’m straight.

This does nothing to explain how aroused I was by that dream of Sai.

I climbed into the shower and pulled the curtain shut before leaning against the wall. I was dizzy and sleepy then, but I was so turned on right now that I didn’t care. What disgusted me even more was that it wasn’t just my cock; my brain had been turned on.

“Sai,” I whispered, and it hurt.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember my dream; Sai naked on the bed he’s letting me use back at his apartment, down on his knees with his face in my crotch. It was too good, and I couldn’t hold back any longer.

As much as I hated it, I was ready to come.

I started to jerk off and I kept the image in my head going. To make myself feel better, I thought some things like ‘Sai’s so girly, and he’s such a fag, that he’d be good at sucking cock’ and ‘Take that, Sai’ but I still knew that it was me that I was mad at.

I closed my hand around my cock and sagged against the wall when I came, relishing in my orgasm. The water suddenly felt too hot, so I turned the temperature down and cleaned off my body.

When I returned to my bed, I felt like shit. I couldn’t look at Sai, so I turned onto my side and pulled the blanket over my head.

It was almost morning.

Too damn early, or too damn late.

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I awoke about two hours later to the sound of my cell phone ringing. I found it in my jeans and answered it quickly, hoping that it hadn’t woken Sai.

“What?” I barked in my morning voice. I coughed a little to clear my throat.

“So you came back into town, and you didn’t call me? Come on, kid, that’s just rude.”

I sat up in bed. “Kakashi?” I asked. I knew that I’d raised my voice so I looked around the room for Sai, hoping that he wouldn’t become interested in my call and try to take my phone from me.

He wasn’t there.

I turned my attention back to my old mentor, who was waiting on the phone. “Man, Kakashi, how’ve you been?” I asked.

He laughed. “Fine, the same as usual. Iruka told me that you’re working for some famous actor?”

I blinked. “Iruka? You’re still talking to Iruka?”

“I see that he didn’t tell you. I moved in with him a few years ago.”

My heart stopped beating as that sank in. “You…and Iruka….?”

“Yes, Naruto. We’re involved in a sexual relationship.”

“Oh,” I said. I felt like an idiot; hell, Kakashi was using his patronizing voice (which just meant that he was intentionally trying to sound even more bored than usual) so I decided not to ask too much.

I’ve been out of all of their lives; it’s not right for me to pry anymore.

“Okay,” I said with a sigh. “He didn’t say anything about it last night, so I didn’t….” I sighed again.

“From what I heard, you didn’t talk much to anyone last night. Your high school reunion is a big deal, you know. It’s important to keep your old friends, Naruto.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. I didn’t want to listen to one of Kakashi’s spiels about how I’m supposed to live my life, so I tried to brush over it. “So when did you and Iruka get together?” I asked with as much enthusiasm as I could.

“Shortly after your graduation. Naruto, I’d like it if I could see you before you go back to….” he trailed off, waiting for me to fill in the blank.

“I’m in Tokyo now,” I said. “I’m kind of sort of liv--”

Right then, the door to our room opened. My eyes shot over to the man who entered the room. Sai was wearing black, as usual, and he was holding two cups of coffee. I tore my eyes from him and turned away from him.

I still couldn’t bear to look at him.

I lowered my voice and turned back to my phone call. “I’m kind of living with my boss right now,” I said as softly as I could. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sai sit down at the table in our room as he started to add sugar to one of the cups of coffee. It was obviously not plain coffee; it was the stuff that already has cream and sugar and syrup in it, but I guess that stuff wasn’t quite enough for him.

“Well, come over to Iruka’s place before you leave. You should know better than to try to avoid your family.”

I rolled my eyes and whispered, “You’re not my family, Kakashi.”

“I always felt like we were, Naruto. Iruka feels the same way.”

“Well, aren’t I so glad that I can have two gay dads,” I said sarcastically. Sai perked up and raised his eyebrows.

Shit.

I stared at Sai for a moment, but he turned away and put the lid back on his coffee without saying a word. Even after he’d stopped looking at me, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.

I felt so damn perverted right then. I couldn’t stop staring at a GUY, for god’s sake.

Stuff like that has happened to me before. There are certain things that I like in women, like confidence (Sakura), slightly thick legs (Sakura), and painted toenails (most women under the age of thirty). These are all normal things, in my book, for a guy to be turned on by.

It might be normal for some people, but I was really disgusted by the fact that I was attracted to a guy. In that moment, right after I’d let that slip out of my mouth, and before Kakashi replied, I was completely entranced with Sai. His silky black hair, soft skin, the way his wrists looked when he held his coffee cup, the position he was sitting in…

I was getting hot.

Kakashi’s voice brought me back. “You don’t have two gay dads. We’re you’re family; we don’t have to have clearly defined roles in your life.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “Look, I’ll come to Iruka’s place in a few hours.” I sighed when Sai turned to me and smiled.

“Can I bring someone else, too?”

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I gripped the steering wheel a little too hard on the ride to Iruka’s. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Sai smiling like a little kid, with his hands on his knees as he waited ever so patiently for me to take him to Iruka’s apartment so that he could embarrass me in front of my so-called family.

I’m still freaked out about the Kakashi and Iruka thing. I didn’t even know that Kakashi was gay, though I’d always kind of thought that Iruka was. Besides that, though, their relationship seems so strange to me because I remember them being on bad terms…throughout my entire memory of them knowing each other.

Iruka was training to be a teacher when I hit high school. My school had a system for training new teachers: they’d have you be the homeroom teacher for each year of students (from first to third grade) before they’d place you in any one grade.

This is why Iruka was my homeroom teacher through every year of high school.

I’d known Kakashi for a little while longer. I got passed around from foster family to foster family when I was little because of behavior problems, so when I was twelve the government decided that it would be easier for me to live by myself and to have some guy check up on me once in a while. That guy turned out to be Kakashi.

I wouldn’t have liked Kakashi so much if he hadn’t made it his personal goal to teach me martial arts. He was weird and creepy and secretive but damn he was cool when it came to karate, and before I knew it I was asking him to come over every day to teach me karate and take me out to eat decent food.

Iruka took me home from school one day to find Kakashi waiting outside my apartment. Kakashi had promised to take me out to a ramen place that day, so, without thinking, I jumped in his car right after Iruka dropped me off.

Kids are stupid.

The long and the short of it is that Iruka questioned me about Kakashi, and he didn’t like the fact that we spent so much time together, so he started to check up on me all the time, too, and he got me in a lot of clubs at school that I didn’t like to try to keep me from seeing Kakashi, who he thought was a dirty pervert. It’s true that he is, I guess, but he’s not a damn pedophile.

Iruka put me in one club that I liked, and that was the karate club. I became friends with Sakura and Sasuke there, which Iruka liked, but I ended up having Kakashi come to some of the practices and I passed around some of his business cards to the students who didn’t train at home with their families or have their own personal tutors. Iruka was PISSED when I did that, and he tried to keep tabs on Kakashi after that.

So, I guess that his plan turned out a little differently from how he’d expected. Good for him.

Sai’s smile widened a little when I pulled my car into the parking lot for Iruka’s apartment complex. I wondered if he had already thought of some things to say to embarrass me in front of Iruka and Kakashi.

I sighed a little as I parked and unbuckled my seat belt. After I’d climbed out of the car, I leaned against my door for a moment and Sai walked around the car to join me.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

I looked at him. Damn, I’d always known he was attractive, but after that dream…I shook my head. My stomach felt uneasy and I wasn’t sure if it was because I was nervous about seeing Iruka and Kakashi again, or if it was because I’d jerked off while thinking about my annoying male boss hours earlier. “Just nervous, that’s all,” I said.

He put his hand on my shoulder and I flinched. Sai started to pull his hand away but I’d already begun to react. My hand found his, and I tried to push it away but I couldn’t help but enjoy the feeling of his soft skin for a moment.

Maybe I’m too old now. Maybe I’m just a perverted old guy.

His arm hung limply at his side and he smiled at me. “Do you feel well enough to go in, Naruto?” Sai asked softly.

I nodded, trying to focus on what I’d come to Iruka’s place for. As I walked away from the car, I said over my shoulder, “Come on, they’re gay. I’m sure you’ll love them.”