It's been FOREVER since I updated this drabble series, ne? I was inspired by something my roommate told me a while ago, I'd just never managed to actually write this idea down. I ended up writing it half during my psychology lecture, the other half during my physiology problem session XD. The things Kisame says in this fic are true; try following his advice, I'm sure you'll be surprised ^^ and don't worry, I'm 2/3 of the way through With Practice, hopefully the next chapter will be done by this weekend (more hopefully by sometime late tonight XD).

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters. They belong to Kishimoto.

Genuine

"Bite one."

"Excuse me?" Sakura asked, her head coming up to fix an even, if somewhat disbelieving, viridian gaze on the man so casually invading her lab. "Why would I want to do that?"

He didn't give her an answer, just kept out that blue-grey hand with its offering of perfectly rounded pearls, and finally she caved. Rolling her eyes to let him know how utterly juvenile she found this, she plucked one of the cream-colored things from his palm.

"I still don't know why I'm doing this," she told him, secretly enjoying the flash of annoyance in his eyes when she stopped with the orb almost to her lips. "And I don't think I want to comply until I get an explanation."

"Kami, Pinkie," the Kiri nin mock-grumbled, though his dark eyes flashed with amusement that he couldn't completely hide. "Will you just do it? It's not like I coated them with poison."

Sakura's lips quirked wryly. "Humor me, Kisame-san."

He muttered under his breath, something about how kidnapped medics should know their place and not sass senior members of the Akatsuki, but in the end he sighed and shrugged.

"If you bite pearls and they feel like sand in your mouth, they're real."

Her emerald eyes gleamed with curiosity and interest then, and he allowed himself a toothy grin when she put the pearl to her lips and did as he'd asked.

"Hnn!"

She spat out the pearl, making a face as her nose crinkled at the sensation tingling through her teeth, and glared at him.

After seven months confined to the Akatsuki headquarters, Sakura could wield a glare like a kunai, those diamond-hard green eyes of hers able to give even Itachi a run for his money. Not that she engaged in many staring matches with the Uchiha. A very interesting incident, during which Itachi had gone blind for half an hour and Sakura had to have a lie down for half a day and which they had never spoken of again except in terse tones, had put an end to any thought of that.

"Ugh, that's such a tooth-aching feeling!" Sakura yelped, working her jaw as if doing so would make the strange sensation that tingled her teeth and inner ears go away. Her teeth scraping along the pearl's supposedly smooth surface had made her feel like she'd chosen to bite down on a handful of sand. No matter that Kisame had warned her that's what it would feel like, she had been utterly unprepared for the reality of it.

Kisame's dark chuckles filled the lab, the shinobi utterly unfazed by Sakura's irritated look. Long years as Itachi's partner had made him immune.

But her next question stopped him mid-laugh, causing her to raise an eyebrow in surprise when the man became suddenly much more quiet.

"Why did you bring these here?"

"Zetsu mentioned that you would need them for an antidote component," he said, and his voice was almost sulky, surprising Sakura though she didn't let it show.

"Oh."

It made sense; Kisame could control water, he was practically half shark, and that boundless chakra of his must come in handy for something like this. It still felt weird that he was giving her pearls. It wasn't like she needed them for anything just yet; she hadn't even finished constructing the poison they would counteract.

It almost felt like….oh…ooooh…

A new consideration filled her eyes, and suddenly the whole situation came into sharp focus. Kisame's sudden sulkiness, the unexpected pearls, the reason why he had been visiting her more and more often in the lab of late.

He probably would never tell her. She'd heard him voice his opinion of his own appearance too many times to think that, if he felt anything for her at all beyond a vague sense of camaraderie after the months she had spent at the Akatsuki base, he would say anything of it.

Which was utterly stupid.

Perhaps she'd concentrated on the superficial as a child, but she was a full-fledged kunoichi and medic now. What he might have thought of as unappealing to the opposite gender, only made him seem more fascinating to her. But he would probably never think of that. It went to show that, in spite of being a powerhouse of Akatsuki, Kisame was still just a regular male, and had a tendency to be clueless to her emotions.

"Kisame-san," her voice halted him as he made to go, and he turned to face her. A smile curved her lips; and for once it wasn't tainted by sadness or worry or general cares from having been kidnapped by the Akatsuki, colored only by faint amusement. "You need to be more like these pearls," she said with a soft, little chuckle.

"More genuine."

She let him go, knowing that, if (and when) he figured out just what she meant, he'd be back.

END

Haha hopefully you enjoyed this? If you do bite real pearls, they feel grainy and sandy against your teeth; I've done it on multiple occasions with my string of freshwater pearls because it's amusing to know they're real even if the sensation IS really weird XD. If you ever get pearls, try it! It's quite funny ^^

Please review, the muse always appreciates it when you do!

Aria, out.