Author's Note: I think a lot of us can sympathize with Kisame lol. Not the looking like a shark part, but just feeling like such an oogly potato.

Summary: Looking like a shark doesn't do very well for a man's self esteem, especially when that man is Kisame Hoshigaki. Oneshot, Lighthearted humor.

© An anime/manga by Masashi Kishimoto

-Tell Me I'm Pretty-

He's lived the entirety of his life, or at least as long as he remembered, being looked upon as some sort of freak show. The whispers, the lengthy staring, and the lot. You'd think a guy would be use to such bull crap by this time, but not Kisame. Nope, never. You didn't get use to it, you got by and hoped you did a little better each passing day.

It would be much easier for Kisame to do so, if not for the fact being in Itachi's presence was always a constant reminder of his ugliness. Especially when the fairer sex were involved, like right now.

The duo had decided to cut through a small village on the outskirts of Lightning country for a "pit stop", to get food in their stomachs and recharge with sleep necessary for the following morning. They were standing at a large kiosk waiting for two orders of Yakitori and Tempura while the woman running the stand awkwardly tried, and failed, to flirt with the unimpressed Uchiha. Maybe she'd have had a better shot if her face wasn't so red and she weren't stuttering so much.

He wouldn't admit it aloud, but Kisame had been pretty envious of Itachi during moments like this. The only attention he had been getting from bystanding women right now were uneasy stares and whispers. Kisame sighed. "How much longer do we have to stand here?" he asked lowly, but loudly enough for his companion to hear.

"As long as it takes her to gives us our food." Itachi stoicly replied, while he inadvertently tuned out what the woman was saying as she wrote something down on a paper.

"Great," the shark man sarcastically stated, at the same time hearing someone speak about how dead his eyes looked.

It made him look at Itachi and stare intently at his eyes and long lashes, or at least what he managed to see beyond his hair. Kisame had to wonder if his beady eyes were the problem with his looks (aside from his blue skin that is). Girls complimented Itachi on his eyes all the time. The kiosk girl, as a matter of fact, had been marveling in how red they were not too long ago, clearly not actually knowing anything about why they were so red. So it lead the question, would he be pretty like Itachi if he had eyes like him?

Then again, the thing that drew women to him like moths to a flame was coincidentally causing him to go blind. That irony.

"What?" He heard Itachi ask, seeing his head was now turned fully towards him. It was then that Kisame realized he'd been zoned out, his eyes locked on the Uchiha the whole time. He'd been unintentionally staring at him.

His cheeks tinted purple, Kisame turned his head and muttered a "nothing". Itachi, if he were one to show any form of emotion, would have perked a curious eyebrow at him. Strange one he is sometimes.

"H-Here you go..." Kiosk Girl stammered, holding out two takeout plates towards both men. "I hope you enjoy your food...good luck on your journey." she meekly stated to Itachi, receiving a hum in response as he took his food and walked away without another word. Kisame had told her a very clear thank you, but it fell on deaf ears as she downheartedly watched his teammate walk away. With a defeated sigh, Kisame slowly followed after him.

They'd eventually found a comfortable spot to sit down at, a long bench bolted down beneath a shady tree. They each opened their takeout plates to begin eating, but before Kisame did he noticed Itachi pause in his movements. He turned his head to see he was staring down at his food, and upon looking himself he saw why he was staring. Itachi's food had been arranged around to, sort of, shape a heart, and there was a note attached to the inside of the styrofoam container. Wet and smudged from the hot food inside, the penmanship was still legible.

I think you're really cute, I hope I get to see you again. — Momo xoxo

Itachi found it to be a little strange, a little creepy even, but he'd been use to these types of things by girls ever since his Academy days back in Konoha. Without a second thought, he peeled the note right off, neatly folded it into a small square, and laid it down between he and his shark friend before he began to eat his food.

Kisame stared at the folded note before he looked at Itachi again. "Looks like you have an admirer." he teased. A low, nearly unheard, grunt was all Itachi replied with as he continued to eat. It was clear to Kisame that Itachi was very indifferent about it, most likely this was nothing new to him. As much as Kisame liked him, one of the few things he didn't like about him was how ungrateful he seemed to be about the attention he got. Let it be him that received that note. He'd have cherished and kept it with him for the remainder of his life, but damn did that sound sad...

What's even sadder, he had half a mind to just take the note anyway and pretend it was written for him.

Kisame felt a few sharp tugs on his coat sleeve and turned to see a little boy staring up at him with big, curious eyes. The boy, who couldn't have been older than five, said nothing, he merely stared at Kisame to a degree that began to make him feel uncomfortable. "Uhh..." He began to assume the child was just hungry or something, and took some meat off his Yakitori skewer and held them out to the boy. "Are you hungry or something?" The child shook his head, making Kisame scoff and pull his hand back. "Then what do you want?"

The boy tilted his head. "You look like a shark." Oh God.

"Yeah, I'm aware..." Kisame trailed.

"Are you a shark?"

"No," Not technically, anyway.

"Is your mommy a shark?"

"I don't have a mom."

"Is your daddy a shark?"

"Don't have one of those either." But shit, he probably was a shark. Obviously he had to have gotten his looks from somewhere.

"Are you from the ocean?" Kisame really had to wonder where the hell this kid's mother was.

"No," he replied as his eyes began to search around for anyone who looked like they could have been his parent.

"Then why do you have gills?" the boy questioned, pointing at the gill markings under Kisame's eyes.

He sighed, growing very tired of this kid. "I don't know." He looked at Itachi, only to see he was still eating as if nothing were going on. He was just tuning all this out, wasn't he?

"So does that mean you can breathe under water?"

Kisame actually did think about that one for a second. "...Yes."

The little boy's eyes brightened. "So you are a shark!"

"I'm not a shark!" Kisame snapped, drawing the attention of the very few people who were out. They stared at his strange appearance, but at the moment he didn't care. He just wanted this kid to go away already.

The child's smile fell. "So you're a...fish...?"

Was it really that hard to grasp the fact Kisame was a man? "I'm not a shark, I'm not a fish."

"Do you eat fish?" The boy asked next.

Kisame stared at him for a few seconds before he calmly closed the lid on his takeout food. Sitting it to the side, he leaned down to be eye level with him. Looking straight into the boy's giant blue eyes with his beady ones, Kisame answered him. "No, but you know what I do eat?" The child shook his head, then leaned forward in complete interest. The shark man then proceeded to say, "Small children." Letting out the loudest roar Kisame could muster, the boy ran away screaming for his mother. Who actually hadn't been standing too far off, though she'd clearly been out of earshot.

"Now would probably be a good time to find a place to sleep." Itachi suggested after witnessing an angry woman look in their direction.

o O o

"You shouldn't have done that." Itachi reprimanded as they both stopped outside an Inn.

Kisame shrugged, indifferent. "He'll be fine." As much of a murderous brute he was, he'd never harm a small, defenseless child in any way. He still had some morals left. "It's not like I was being serious, you know I don't gobble up kids."

"He didn't know that," Itachi countered, pushing open the Inn's front doors. Turning to Kisame, he asked, "Are you coming in?"

"I'd rather stay out here." He'd had enough of being stared at for today, enough to last him a lifetime. "Just come get me after you get a room."

"Mhm," Itachi hummed before disappearing inside the building.

By now, the sun had been disappearing behind the horizon and the sky had turned orange. There were hardly any people out on the street anymore, and Kisame seemed to go unnoticed by the few who were. Or so he'd thought. He felt the familiar tingle of eyes staring a hole right into his head as he paced around. He sighed, knowing somebody had been staring again, but he pointedly decided to just ignore it this time.

"Pssst..." Kisame stopped his pacing and looked around. "Psssssst..." Where was that noise coming from? Turning around again, he saw, standing not too far way, a teenage girl. She had very long, sleek hair tied up in a ponytail, and she was looking in his direction. "Hi!" he heard her say before waving her hand in greeting.

Kisame turned around, assuming she'd been talking to somebody behind him, only to see there wasn't really anyone else around. Turning to the girl again, he heard her repeat herself. "Hello!"

"...Are you...speaking to me?" Kisame asked, pointing to himself. To his utter shock, the girl nodded her head and jogged right up to him. She slowed down once she was closer, and smiled wider once she got a clearer look of him. She had wide blue eyes that immediately reminded him about the child from earlier. "Let me guess, you wanna know if I'm a shark?" he questioned, fully expecting her to ask.

She blinked curiously. "I wasn't exactly going to ask, why? Are you?"

Kisame raised his eyebrows, that was a first. "No,"

She giggled, "Well, you kind of look like one." she commented. "I think that's cool."

He'd been so caught off guard by the latter that he nearly thought he misheard her. His mouth fell open, making him look like he were ready to speak. She thought he looked...cool? "Seriously?" He had to ask for confirmation, just to make sure he really had heard her correctly.

She vigorously nodded her head. "Yeah!" She lifted her left arm. "You kind of look like the charm on my bracelet." Sure enough a beaded bracelet hung at her wrist, with a cartoon shark attached to it.

"Oh...thanks..." He hadn't known if that was supposed to be a compliment or not, but it was the closest thing to one he ever got. So he'd take it.

Her smile never dropped. "I've never seen anybody like you pass through this town before, you're very exotic looking." she said. "Especially your eyes, they're so small and cute!" she giggled.

As embarrassing as it was, a blush spread across Kisame's cheeks that turned the skin there purple. What was funny is that this girl had no clue who she was speaking to. He was a part of a murderous band of wanted criminals, and here she was calling him cute. "Cute...?" he lowly repeated.

She nodded her head again. "I'd even say they're pretty." She pulled her bracelet off of her wrist and took his hand. She dropped it into his opened palm and curled his fingers around it. "You can keep that, it's not often I see such an interesting looking guy." She looked him straight in the eye, something not many civilian people did. "Think of it as a little souvenir. Whenever you look at it, you can remember the time that you spent here."

"Uhhh..." Kisame, his cheeks still purple, was at a loss for words. But the girl didn't seem to notice, or care, as she let go of his hand and left him following a vocal goodbye. He couldn't remember the last time someone had given him such a trivial gift, and he didn't ever remember someone complimenting his looks like that. Kisame watched her as she walked away, even after she turned her back and was no longer looking.

She got smaller and smaller the more distance was put between them, and he still watched her. Standing there like an idiot while his mouth was hung open, Kisame only snapped out of it when he heard Itachi speak. "What are you looking at?" the Uchiha asked from beside him as he stepped out into the street. Looking in the same direction Kisame had just been, he could only barely see someone walking down the road. Turning to Kisame again, he noticed something was closed in his fist. "What's that in your hand?"

Kisame looked down and noticed he'd never dropped his hand. Glancing at Itachi, he lowered his arm. "It's nothing..."

"Hmm..." Itachi hummed, but didn't question him any further. "I got the room." he informed, turning back around to reenter the Inn. "It's getting dark."

"I hear ya," Kisame nodded. "I'll be there." From the corner of his eye he could see Itachi walk back inside, and that girl who's name he never got was nearly a spec in the distance. Lifting his hand up, he uncurled his fingers to get a look at the little shark. The setting sun gave enough light to reflect off of it, giving it a small gleam. "Heh...I look like a cartoon shark." But that was apparently cute. He slipped the bracelet onto his left wrist and hastily pushed it under his arm warmer before following after Itachi.

Kisame had made a silent vow to himself that he'd wear that charm for the rest of his days.