A/N: Hanami is an activity in Japan where people will go out with friends and family in the spring to watch the Sakura trees in bloom. They usually bring picnic lunches and perhaps sake while enjoying the nice weather and beautiful flowers.
Hanami
The petals were falling around him like pink snow, floating on the breeze until they came to rest on the grass and his blanket and his sketchpad. The presence of the silky blossoms didn't deter his drawing in the least. In fact, he rather enjoyed the scene of tall trees bursting with cotton candy color, their petals falling in showers all around him with every breath of wind.
A bird landed on a branch above him, trilling sweetly with a flurry of feathers and knocked one of the cherry blossoms loose. Sai watched it drift towards the ground and held out his hand to catch it, cradling the delicate flower in his palm before leaning back against the tree's trunk comfortably, sketch pad and charcoal in his lap.
He had lived in Konoha all his life, although many missions had kept him away for long periods of time, but thanks to his intensive training in ROOT, he had never really gotten the chance to sit down and enjoy the sakura blossoms when they bloomed every spring. Instead he had simply admired them in passing while everyone else brought their picnic baskets and blankets and spent time with their friends and family, laughing under bouquets of brilliant pink petals as they celebrated hanami.
He had never really minded being denied this in the past, but he supposed that was because even if he had had the luxury to gaze at trees for hours, he had no friends or family to share the experience with. All he had ever had was his position in ROOT and his sketch books and until he had met the members of team Kakashi, that had been enough.
But after meeting Sakura and Naruto and seeing the fierce loyalty they had towards their third team member even after all that he had done, he couldn't help but want to know more about that kind of bond and experience what friendship was like first hand.
So he had requested to be a permanent part of the team and had enjoyed it ever since, absorbing all the knowledge about life that he could from the loudmouth blond and violent female. Naruto was undoubtedly an idiot, but the kindest, most determined idiot he had ever known, and Sakura, though a little frightening, was incredibly strong and skilled as a medic and he admired her greatly for it.
In fact, he had been admiring her for all sorts of reasons as of late.
He stared at the flower resting in his palm and noted that it the same delicate shade of pink as her hair and he wondered if the strands on her head would feel as soft as the silky petals. Her silvery laugh floated to him on the wind and he looked up to find her giggling with her female friend that worked in the local flower shop. Yama…something or other. Despite the fact that he had given the blonde the name "Beautiful" while he affectionately called Sakura "Ugly" his actual thoughts were quite the opposite. He had always found the pink haired kunoichi to be intriguing, but the more he got to know her, the more he found his interest in her going beyond simple curiosity. She really was quite lovely although he doubted she knew that about herself and somehow that made her all the more appealing. She had so many qualities about her, both physical and otherwise that he found attractive, and yet as his feelings grew with every passing day, he found himself struggling to give the rising emotions a name considering he had never really felt much of anything during his entire career in ROOT. It was difficult to identify emotions when he had never had any before.
He continued to look at Sakura, knowing he was far enough away from her that she wouldn't accuse him of staring. She was sitting with her flower shop friend and the two other members of Team Ten as well as Naruto on the expansive blanket they had brought. Between the two teams they had brought a great deal of food although most of it seemed to have already been consumed by the largest of the group, a fact that the female blonde seemed to dislike since she was constantly shrieking at him to stop eating everything in sight.
Sakura just laughed and smiled, looking just as pretty as her blossoming namesake, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear absently.
Sai looked down at his sketch. It was only half finished but already many of the details in it were quite clear, her radiant smile, her wind tousled hair, even her red hitai-ate which was slightly battered and scratched were all captured by his hand. He had sketched her dozens of times already without her knowledge and he had memorized her features to the point where he could draw them without even seeing her face. He figured that if she ever caught him drawing her she would probably punch him like she had done on their first mission all that time ago so he kept all of his sketches safely hidden away, but that didn't stop him from admiring her from afar.
The sun's warm rays felt good on his cheek and he felt his eyes growing heavy as drowsiness set in. Despite his deeply ingrained training to constantly be on the alert, he allowed his guard to drop as he drifted off, lulled by the sweet scent of cherry blossoms that smelled suspiciously similar to the shampoo a certain pink haired team mate of his tended to use.
He awoke what seemed like only a moment later to find a figure looming over him. One glance at her rose colored hair revealed her identity.
"Hey," she said softly, squatting down until she was eye level with him. "Were you planning on sleeping out here all day?"
He ran a hand through cropped black locks and gave her a smile. There had been a time when his smiles held no humor and served as a simple façade for manipulating people but now he was beginning to learn how to let his true emotions show through.
"I just dozed off for a while," he said, looking down to find that the lone flower was still sitting in his hand.
"Were you drawing?" she asked, noting the pad of paper in his lap.
He nodded, focusing on the flecks of amber that danced in her green eyes.
"Lemme see!"
She snatched his pad away before he could protest and Sai held his breath, wincing slightly as he braced himself for the impact of her fist once she realized the subject of his work. But when the attack never came, he risked opening his eyes to find her staring at the paper in her hands, her expression one of surprise and confusion, but not anger.
"Sai," she breathed, tracing her fingers over the paper. "This is…how long…why would you…?"
"I like drawing beautiful things," he answered simply, hoping his answer wouldn't earn him the punch that had so far been delayed. Instead her lips parted in a surprised gasp and her wide eyes shifted to meet his.
"W-What did you say?"
The artist glanced down at the flower in his hand and then back at her before leaning forward and tucking the short stem into her hair behind her ear.
"I said you're beautiful…Ugly."
He risked using the nickname that never failed to get him a beating but this time, she raised her hand to tentatively touch the flower in her hair rather than deliver a painful blow. She looked pleased at his words, a slight smile on her lips and a rosy blush to her cheeks and he took the chance to make his escape, prying his sketchpad from her shocked fingers before she could retaliate.
By the time she had recovered from his surprising words, he was out of sight, well on his way back to his studio apartment on the other side of town, but even in the city streets, the smell of cherry blossoms still lingered.
He couldn't be sure how Sakura would act next time she saw him, whether it be with a smile or her fist, but wither way, he had a strange sense of elation at being able to make her smile. Even if she punched it for him later, seeing her in that moment was better than seeing a thousand blossoms on a thousand trees, for in his mind she was the prettiest bloom of them all.