As much as I Yuri-Ship Sakura and Ino and the BFF-turned-Gay-Lovers story line around them, I adore all of the canon couples & their kids. For today, let me show my love for the way Ino brings out the best of Sai.

Nomenclature

*Time: about a year into everyone's marriages. Pre-next-gen.*

Sai studied the careful looks his friends—he felt a little flash of warmth bloom within his chest at the realization that he had those nowadays—were giving him. He supposed this was understandable, because from their perspective, him asking for them to meet over coffee was about as in-character as his wife stuttering in the manner Naruto's gentle spouse usually did.

He paused, correcting himself. Hyuuga Hinata—now Uzumaki—no longer stuttered and stood with a straight back. In fact, so many of them had changed over the years in ways which were imperceptible due to the slow passage of time. He had heard stories of what Sakura and Hinata were like back when they were genin, and he had a very difficult time comprehending how they could be the same people now, and still the same people then, but be so different. Ino had smiled warmly to him that day, pointing out that he pretty much changed the same way they had; he probably just didn't know it yet. He smiled reflexively, although only mildly. The Yamanaka heiress had that effect on him.

"Sai?" Sakura's voice snapped him back to attention.

He regarded his teammates one by one. He looked over to Naruto, then Yamato-taicho, and then to Sakura whose belly was starting to show signs of pregnancy. She seemed to glow instead of whither. He used to think that having another human being leeching off of her health and chakra would be something of an inconvenience—Sai knew that Sakura loved to work, and could not understand why on earth she was so happy about having to take a break from her responsibilities for the next six months. Even the stoic and hard-hearted Sasuke was giving off a sort of mirth and gentleness he had never expected from him.

'Looks Sakura and I are still in competition, after all.' Ino had joked about it sometime ago. 'But after seeing Sasuke like that, looks like I'm winning the 'who-married-a-brick-with-no-feelings' competition.' Sai had been flustered and alarmed at the comment; he was trying so hard. Ino smiled, wrapped her arms around his neck, and assured him that she was kidding; and that she knew Sai was more than the emotionless husk he used to be.

"Oi—Sai!" Sakura poked at his temple and for a fleeting second he had actually felt fear because he knew that may have been enough to sever his head from his neck. Thankfully she felt like holding back today. "What gives? Are you okay?" She looked genuinely concerned.

Right. Back to the reason he had called together the Team 7 which he felt he belonged to. When his cheeks started to flush, and his palms seemed to sweat and fiddle around, Naruto outright stared.

"A—Ano… is everything alright?" Naruto asked as tactfully as possible.

"Did something happen? Marriage problems?" Yamato-taicho mirrored their concern, his jaw set in worry at Sai's out-of-character behavior.

To be honest, he felt happy. He felt a joy so in-comprehensively massive that his emotionally-challenged personality was thrown into turmoil at how to express it all. He felt like he couldn't—he felt like he might as well burst. This overwhelming surge of emotion was foreign to him, and his physiology didn't know how to cope. He was sweating, a bit jittery, with a confused look on his face. And understandably, Naruto, Yamato and Sakura thought the worst of it. When the surge had died down (and they had thankfully given him time to compose himself without pestering him), the first tear tentatively fell. His teammates were silent and Sai wondered what they were thinking. The only time they heard of him crying was when Shin had finally gone to rest during the war.

But he had shed tears before, that was a fact. When all the guests of his wedding had gone ahead and home and it was just him and his new wife, he cried and she had kissed his tears away with a smile.

When he came home to Ino, who looked like she was torn between panic and elation, and heard what was possibly the best news he had ever heard in his life, he cried once again, holding her in his arms.

"Ino and I—We're—" He stuttered. "I'm going to be a father." He said with a shaky breath, and after he let the words he had uttered himself sink in, he was finally able to smile. It wasn't a grin, it wasn't a laugh, it was simply the most genuine smile he had ever dared to give.

The three had held their breaths, and soon chaos ensued. Sakura was screaming—When? How did they find out? She had to be the one delivering the baby, no arguing—Sai felt himself be nearly choked to death with the grip she had hugged him with. Naruto was grinning ear to ear, his eyes going red from the emotional stimulation—he supposed that meant Kurama was happy for him, as well. His two loud 'best friends' had almost drowned him with expressions of joy (Naruto had taken it upon himself to educate Sai on how—to borrow a term from Shikamaru—troublesome pregnant women are. If even Hinata could get temperamental during her term, he couldn't imagine what he and Sasuke were in for with Sakura and Ino).

Yamato-taicho had waterfalls for eyes, and was sniffling while incoherently mumbling that he would make a wooden crib, a rocking-chair, and maybe even an entire wooden play-ground for the three future 'nieces or nephews' he was expecting from his beloved students. "Are you three sure you don't want bigger houses?" he genuinely offered, to their bemusement.

"Sai?" Sakura questioned once again when she noticed Sai's silence. "How do you… feel about it?"

"I—I…" Sai trailed off, unsure how to describe it.

Then he resolved himself. They were his first friends.

He brought his right hand over this chest, and gripped his shirt so tight it threatened to tear. He was shaking. "I feel a warmth here." He started, "It is so… peculiarly bright. And strong. That I feel overwhelmed. It feels like there is nothing else I should feel but this." He gently pounded on his chest. "I am sometimes driven dizzy by how strongly I felt for it, I read in my books that—"

"Forget your books," Naruto scolded. "Tell us."

Sai visibly struggled. He was new to all of this, and he was mulling over the perfect word, the perfect term to use—what name would be strong enough for everything he felt right now? He could think of none.

"Is this what true happiness is?" He couldn't help the smile, aware of how uncharacteristic tears must look on him. He settled for 'happiness', because he could think of no other one. "Ino… I am aware that I love her. And I no longer know which words to choose in order to convey to her the magnitude of my—" He paused, as if searching through his index of newly-learned words. "—sheer gratitude."

"I can barely sleep," He continued, not bothering to wait for his friends to reply. Why were they tearing up? He would have to ask Ino later. "Because all I can think of is that I will be a father. Then I am afraid, because—what I'm not enough? Then I'm happy again, because I can see that Ino is smiling and all this time I never thought she could become even more beautiful than I already thought her to be." He continued to ramble, and Sakura gave off an amused sort of snort or snicker. "It is all so frustratingly confusing. At the same time it is all so overwhelmingly wonderful."

Sakura, understanding that Sai likely needed an outlet lest he actually does explode from happiness, brought up a hand to silence Naruto when he was about to say something, then signaled for Sai to continue.

"I have been thinking of things I never thought I would have to luxury to think about." He admitted. "Was the baby going to be a boy, or a girl? Blonde or raven-haired? Surely, if the child inherits Ino's eyes there will be no painting in the world to capture all the life and beauty in eyes like those. And then there will be more than one pair of them in my life."

By now, Sakura was practically swooning for her best friend.

"And it has come to my understanding that I must never comment on Ino's state of bloatedness during her nine-month term." He scowled. "Which really confuses me, because I thought she would be happy about her engorged belly—"

Naruto snorted and Sakura grinned. "For everyone's sake, as much as I'd love to see Ino's face if you so much as whispered 'engorged belly' around my best friend, just don't. Believe me."

"Heh, not that you're any better in that department, Sakura-cha—" And with a quick punch, Sakura had proven to Naruto that a pregnant woman could still punch him into the next ten years.

Sai blinked at Naruto's black-eye, confused. He quickly recalled how the feminine mind was unusually tricky, and asserted to himself that women preferred to be told the opposite of what they meant. "What did you hit him for, skinny?" He titled his head innocently.

When Sakura (who had been informed of his method of choosing nicknames) had put two and two together, she punched the living lights out of Sai so viciously that Yamato wondered how he was going to tell Yamanaka Ino to pick her husband up from the hospital later that day.

There we go! I hope you liked!