Author's Note: Past the halfway mark.

Sai and Yamato took the news of Naruto's pregnancy much more calmly than Iruka had. In Yamato's case it was because he had a more calm personality overall, so therefore it was totally expected when all he said after Naruto had told him the story was a neutral, "That's… interesting Naruto."

Sai, on the other hand, took it well because that's the only way he knew how to take things. What he asked afterwards, however, managed to throw Naruto a bit for a loop. "Can I draw you?"

Naruto blinked. "Why would you want to do that?"

Sai's habitual smile widened. "Well, it isn't like I'll ever have the chance to have a pregnant man as my model again."

If the young ANBU had stopped there, Naruto might have agreed, but in typical Sai fashion he didn't know when to shut up. "And here I was thinking ugly was going to be the one to get all fat and bulgy. I guess I was right to be confused as to whether to you were a man when we first met after all, Naruto."

Sakura wasn't there, so it was on her behalf as well as his own that Naruto then punched Sai with enough force to knock him into the wall. "You'll get to draw me when hell freezes over, you ass." Then he slammed the door (for they were standing right outside Naruto's apartment) in the ANBU's face.

Sasuke walked out of the bathroom five seconds later with a toothbrush in hand and his face flecked with loam. "Who was that?"

"Sai. The fucker called Sakura-chan ugly and me a woman. Again."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "So I take it the thump I heard was you hitting him?"

"Damn right."

"Good." Then Sasuke grinned. Naruto didn't blame him. Sasuke never had gotten around to accepting Sai as an honorable member of Team Seven. Mostly because Sai had taken one look at him and announced that he had wondered if there was a guy in the world girly enough for Naruto to top, and how interesting it was to come across him so soon. If you are in fact a him, you are a man right, Sasuke-chan? It really is hard to tell.

It had taken the combined force of Kakashi and Yamato both to keep Sasuke from killing the artistic assassin. Sakura might have managed it alone, if she hadn't been cheering Sasuke on at the time. Naruto had been too busy laughing to be of help to anyone.

After Sasuke wandered back into the bathroom, there was a polite knock on the door. "Naruto? I'm sorry. I know how much it upsets people when I tell them the truth. I should have remembered that."

"Go fuck yourself, Sai."

"I already did that this morning." Then, conversationally, "You know, it really is much harder than you'd think to get one's fingers all the way to the prostate-"

Naruto covered his ears with his hands. He really, really should have known the ANBU would take him seriously, just to be a jackass about it. "Sai, shut up!"

"- but I suppose asking Yamato-senpai to assist wasn't the best choice to make. Oh well. See you later, Naruto!"

Sometimes, Naruto really, really wondered about his life. Somehow he doubted that everyone's friends were as outright insane as his.

----

"Sasuke?"

"Mf."

Sasuke did his best to roll over and go back to sleep, but Naruto's persistent shaking of his shoulder wouldn't let him. "Hey, tightwad, wake up."

Sasuke blearily opened his eyes. "What the fuck do want now, Naruto? It's three o'clock in the morning and I have a mission in five hours."

"I want some wasabi."

Sasuke rubbed at his eyes. "What for?"

Even though his eyesight was better than most, it was still hard for Sasuke to see in the dark, and he could only just make out his teammate's shrug. "I don't know. I just do. I woke up an hour ago and I can't stop thinking about it."

"We don't have any. Just get some tomorrow at the grocery store."

"I can't wait that long, you bastard. Sakura-chan has some, and you're the one with the key to her apartment."

Finally giving up on ever going back to sleep, Sasuke propped himself up on his elbows and brushed the hair out of his eyes. "Let me get this straight. You want me to walk across town to Sakura's apartment and wake her up so you can eat some wasabi?"

"Well, you don't need to wake her up since you have the key."

"Do you honestly think she won't stab me if I try to sneak in? And she has a shift at the hospital tomorrow. She'll kill me if I get her out of bed."

"Please?"

"Not a chance in hell, Naruto."

It was fifteen minutes later Sasuke found himself standing outside Sakura's apartment, trying to convince himself that she wouldn't really kill him if he woke her up at this hour. It was with this not very firm conviction in mind that he rang the doorbell.

It took almost five minutes- during which he heard an inordinate amount of swearing, and Sasuke hadn't known that Sakura knew that much profanity- before his female teammate pulled open the door, wearing nothing but a bra and panties. "Do you have any idea what time it is?"

Sasuke stared. If he was straight, he was fairly sure he would be getting a nosebleed right now, but as it was, all he did was blush and mumble out, "Naruto wants some wasabi and sent me over to get some from you."

Sakura stared back at him, then visibly calmed down. "Oh, it's you, Sasuke-kun. Naruto sent you, did he? That makes sense. It's about time his cravings started." She turned around and walked back into her apartment, though she returned shortly with a small jar. "Here it is. Don't let him eat too much, though."

Sasuke looked down at the jar. "Why? Is it bad for the baby?"

Sakura shrugged. "Not really. It's just spicy as hell."

So in the end, Naruto got his wasabi. Not that the moron was properly thankful for it.

Four nights later…

"Hey, Sasuke?"

"What?"

"I want crab."

Sasuke covered his face with his pillow. "They don't serve crab in Fire Country, you idiot."

"Yeah, I thought about that, but the coast is only like a few days away if you're fast…"

And that was how Sasuke found himself back in Wave Country. Tazuna and his family were glad to see him again, but when Inari asked about Naruto, all Sasuke could do was shake his head and say, "You don't want to know. Trust me. You really don't want to know…"

----

One morning Sasuke slept in late (by shinobi standards; it was almost seven) and walked into the kitchen to catch sight of Naruto, dressed only in boxers, drinking milk out of the carton. "Naruto, you moron, do you have any idea how unsanitary that…" Sasuke trailed off.

Naruto had looked guilty as soon as Sasuke had made his appearance (the milk mustache made deniability somewhat implausible), but the guilty look became more confused as Sasuke continued to stare at him. "Sasuke? What is it?"

It was after a significant pause that Sasuke announced. "I think you're beginning to show."

Naruto blinked at his teammate. Then he rushed into the bathroom, milk cartoon still in hand.

There was a moment of silence, but the howl that soon followed more than made up for it, if only because Sasuke spent the rest of the morning apologizing to the neighbors for waking them up so early on the weekend.

Word among those in the know got around fast, and it was only the next day that while trying to fix the television, Naruto answered the door to find Hinata standing outside. "Hey, Hinata-chan! What's the occasion?"

Staring at the floor and blushing furiously, Hinata pulled something out from her messenger bag and handed it to him. "H-here, Naruto-kun. This is for you."

Naruto looked down at the clear glass container he now held in hand. "Thanks!" Then he realized he had no idea what he was thanking her for. "Uh, Hinata-chan… what is it?"

"I made it. It… helps pregnant woman- not that I think you're a woman, Naruto-kun- from having too many… um…" Hinata blushed again, and what she said next came out mumbled and indecipherable.

Naruto peered at her. "I'm sorry, Hinata-chan… what was that?"

She squeaked it out, then ran off to the end of the hall and down the stairs without even giving her customary goodbye. Naruto watched her go with incomprehension. "Stretch marks? What the hell are stretch marks?"

----

Kakashi liked having Gai around. He really did. He knew in many ways the taijutsu user balanced him out, overreacting in situations that Kakashi would hardly react to at all and taking things well that would shatter Kakashi's very soul. Two halves of a very weird couple, ying and yang of a relationship that found its origins in bizarro land, but still, they worked, and Kakashi wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Gai was also a tiger in bed, which wasn't, as any man would tell you who had been in more than one relationship, everything, but still was a hell of a lot.

Still, that didn't mean he understood his partner. Better than most, true, but most didn't understand him at all and habitually wrote the green-clad jounin off as a force of nature, so better than most wasn't exactly worth bragging about. Kakashi was therefore more than slightly flummoxed when he and Gai passed by a hair salon and Gai promptly burst out crying.

As anyone who knew Gai at all was aware, the taijutsu user cried loudly and incessantly, which occasionally could be embarrassing in public. Luckily there was an abandoned alley handy (why and how those originated with not perceivable purpose in mind Kakashi didn't know, but as he had often said before, gift horse, don't look), so Kakashi dragged Gai, who was still sobbing, there to wait out his crying jag. This took a while, long enough that Kakashi had already made it to chapter three of the newly released fifth book of the Icha Icha Paradise series and was getting somewhat invested into the plot when Gai, rubbing at his eyes with a handkerchief, said solemnly, "I apologize for that, Kakashi. It's just… when I saw that salon, I… I couldn't help but think."

Kakashi turned another page of his book. "Of?"

"Of our child."

That was the thing about Gai. While he was perfectly capable of living in the present, Gai was also something of a boy scout. Meaning he had been born with the motto clenched in one resolute fist. They had bought the crib two days after the pregnancy had been revealed, the little spinny thing above the crib Kakashi couldn't remember the name of the same day, and they had begun painting a week ago, despite Kakashi pointing out it was usually traditional to wait until the gender of the baby had been revealed. Gai had scoffed at this and said it didn't matter; the room would be painted green regardless. If Kakashi had had a favorite color, he might have protested at this, but as it was, he didn't, so he didn't care. So, green it was.

Along with all that (and the baby care classes Gai had signed up for and dragged Kakashi to three times a week), Gai was already speaking of the baby in the present tense, even though it wouldn't be born for five months. Which was, in Kakashi's opinion, kind of weird. It also, on some fundamental level, bothered him. He had been even less prepared for children than most, for he had been having sex with no one but men for almost a decade and the chances of getting one of them pregnant was… well, apparently greater than he had thought, but still abysmally low. And then one day, poof, he was a father. Kakashi was flexible, and he knew he would adjust to the idea in time, but he wished that Gai would at least give him a few months of speaking of the child as something that would happen as opposed to something that already had.

Not that this could ever be properly explained, so Kakashi didn't even try. "Why did a hair salon make you think of the kid?" Baby shops, he could understand. Ditto on passing small children in the street. But a hair salon?

"I was thinking… of the first bowl cut he would receive. And how absolutely darling it would look on him…"

Kakashi was flexible. That didn't mean he didn't have a snapping point. "Not a chance in hell, Gai. The kid's going to be a Hatake. Or maybe an Uzumaki. Either way his hair's going to be spiky, and that means no bowl cut."

Gai stared at him. He looked devastated. "Never?"

"Never. You already have one clone. Two'd really be pushing it."

Gai stared at him wide-eyed. For a moment Kakashi was afraid he was going to burst out crying again, but instead the taijutsu user started a rant (that by the second sentence already promised to be longwinded) listing the virtues of the bowl cut, among with were increased confidence and less wind resistance. Kakashi refuted them all, and it was only later that he realized that he'd referred to the kid as a Hatake. Meaning it was really his, and really was, instead of was going to be.

Crap. That meant he had to start taking the baby care classes seriously after all.