Chapter Two

Unexpected Tensions

Sakura ducked, her head missing the impact with Sasuke’s foot by scant centimeters before she countered, bringing her fist up beneath his guard to catch him in the stomach.

The flat of his palm connected instantly with her chest just below her throat and he shoved her away roughly, leaning forward and propping his hands on his knees as he caught his breath. “That was a dirty move, Sakura.”

She grinned, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, but making no move to retie her hair- the long tendrils fell to her waist, still holding unnatural curls from the bun it had fallen out of. “Well, it’s like you and Kakashi are always saying; we’re criminals. I have to learn to fight like one sometime, right?”

He straightened up- yes, this was Kakashi’s idea, after all, for him to spar with Sakura so that her fighting skills wouldn’t lose their edge should she ever find herself in a predicament where she needed them. He glanced at the clock, an hour and a half and she was still keeping up with him. Although he would never admit it aloud, the girl never ceased to amaze him . . . though it did grate on his nerves to no end to think she might outdo him on something.

“Good,” hands on his hips he strolled casually up to her and grinned back, noting the sudden glint of uncertainty in those jade eyes- she clearly knew he wasn’t one much for smiling . . . unless he was thinking something evil, “means I don’t have to hold back anymore.”

He bent low suddenly, whirling around to sweep her legs out from under her. Sakura landed hard on her back, grimacing as the wind was knocked out of her lungs. She kicked upward, her heel catching him between his legs and he crumbled on top of her almost instantly, landing on his knees and one hand as he delicately clutched the wounded area with the other and his eyes squeezed tightly shut. The pained look on his face immediately made her feel apologetic.

“Oh, god, I am so sorry, Sasuke!”

He shook his head, wincing a little and placed his protective hand on the floor as well. “No, no, it’s . . . it’s fine. I shouldn’t have left myself open. That’s about the dirtiest trick a girl can use, I should’ve expected it.”

Dark eyes opened and looked down at her and Sakura was suddenly acutely aware of their position as she lay helplessly on her back with Sasuke above her on all fours. She tried to quell those two damnable little butterflies as she realized that his face was not far at all from the tight red sports-bra that constricted her breasts just enough to make her feel a few inches away from a flat-chested twelve year old. She was breathing a little too hard and the fact was not lost on him as his gaze dropped to the red, sweat dampened fabric beneath him before lifting it to hers once more.

“Um,” she grinned sheepishly, trying to break the tension as she cracked what she knew to be a joke in poor taste, keeping her tone light, “really I’m very sorry. Ha ha, um, want me to kiss it and make it better?”

She knew he could tell she was only kidding, but the suddenly serious look in his eyes wiped the amusement from her face instantly as he replied, “That’s not a bad idea.”

Her breath caught in her throat as he inched upwards; lowering himself as he did so until his face was just above hers. For a long, silent moment, they simply stared at eachother before his face was lowering again. Sakura allowed her eyes to drift closed as she felt Sasuke’s warm breath whispering over her parted lips.

“Hey guys, Kaka . . . shi . . . said . . . whoa!”

Sasuke’s head dropped down against Sakura’s shoulder, grumbling angrily under his breath as she raised her eyes to the training room’s entrance to see a furiously blushing Naruto gaping at them. Damn you, her mind screamed vehemently as she stared daggers at him.

“Ya know,” he began with an awkward laugh, “when you guys said you were going to spend the morning sparring, I thought you meant martial arts, not tonsil hockey.”

“Funny,” Sasuke muttered as he pushed up from the floor and offered Sakura his hand.

She blinked at his fingers for a long moment. Eight months of practically acting like she wasn’t even a girl and now, after one almost-kiss, he was behaving gentlemanly? Shaking her head- she would probably go to her grave before understanding the way Uchiha Sasuke worked- she took his hand and allowed him to pull her up.

“Naruto,” she said quietly, trying very, very hard not to be mad at him as Sasuke sauntered away to retrieve two white towels from the balance bar, “what did Kakashi say?”

“We’re meeting with Tsunade-sama.”

Sakura almost dropped the towel Sasuke had handed her as they demanded in unison, “WHAT?!”

Naruto nodded, “Yeah, in like half an hour. So . . . you two should get cleaned up.” Turning away, he started back out the door before calling over his shoulder, “I would’ve suggested you two share the shower to save time, but . . . mm, now I’m thinking that would only take longer.”

It was no surprise when two balled up white towels hit him square in the back of his head.

Sakura made her way to follow as she tried to figure out what their boss’s boss wanted with them- they hadn’t botched a single job, hadn’t left any loose ends with which someone might catch onto them. What could it possibly be then?

“Sakura,” Sasuke called suddenly and she spun on her heel to face him and the sight of him- the sleeveless blue t-shirt that revealed the sculpted muscles of his arms, the off-white loose-fitted sweat pants that clung to him now, leaving precious little to the imagination, his long spiky black hair all in disarray- knocked the wind out of her all over again.

“Yes, Sasuke?”

He lowered his head, resting one hand on his hip as he ran the other through his hair, “Listen, about what just happened-”

“Oh, I know,” she said suddenly, because it would be less painful to say it herself than to hear it from him, “it was just an . . . in the moment kind of thing and it might not happen again.”

He raised his gaze to hers and nodded slowly, “Um . . . yeah, yeah.” Instantly Sakura wanted to kick herself, something in his tone gave her the impression that that wasn’t what he was going to say, nice job, billboard-brow. “You can hit the shower first.”

“Thanks,” she mumbled, turning and heading for the bathroom.

The shower did little to calm her flustered nerves. It would be alright if she had someplace else to go, but the unit shared a loft- spacious and sectioned off to create bedrooms and the training area, though it was- and she dreaded suddenly that she lived with Uchiha Sasuke. Wrapping a warm, dry towel around her water-sprinkled skin, she roughly towel-dried her hair as she cursed her luck. Surely she had been singing Kakashi’s praises when he’d first told her of the living arrangements . . . but now, now she wanted to kick him where it hurt. Grumbling nonsensically to noone at all about the men in her life, she wound her damp locks into an untidy bun at the back of her head.

Letting out a sigh, she scooped up her clothes and grasped the door knob. What the hell had he been planning to say? Nodding to herself, she decided never to jump the gun again on anything concerning Sasuke. At last pulling the door open, she found herself face-to-face with the man . . . or rather, the man’s shirtless chest.

Lifting her gaze, she found that his eyes were not on her face, but had dropped down, giving her towel-wrapped figure a quick once-over. “Sorry, I . . . I didn’t hear the water so I thought you’d already gone back to your room.”

“Yeah,” she responded, clearing her throat uncomfortably, “next time I’ll, um, try to dry myself more loudly.”

She slipped past him, trying desperately to avoid any skin-to-skin contact and failing, her shoulder brushing his chest as he turned to give her room. It almost halted her in her tracks, but then she willed herself to take another step. Suddenly she felt his lips pressing to the side of her throat. It was brief, but the gentle scraping of his teeth along her flesh, his tongue swirling in a delicate, teasing pattern over her pulse was enough to make her eyes drift closed, her teeth nibbling hard on her bottom lip as she fought the urge to sink back against him. But then it was over and she heard the soft clicking of the door closing between them.

Letting out a low, rattling sigh, she whispered to herself, “I guess it actually might happen again.”

Sasuke’s voice came through the door, just loud enough to be heard, “You’re right Sakura, it just might.”

oooooooo

“Hey, Neji,” Tenten’s voice chimed suddenly, seeming to come out of thin air as she bounced into the kitchen area and took a seat across from him at the table.

Lifting his eyes from the newspaper to regard her he nodded almost imperceptibly before lifting his coffee mug to his lips. “Ten,” he said quietly after sipping, “you’re certainly chipper this morning.”

“Well,” she smiled brightly, reaching for the pot of fresh coffee in the center of the table and filling her own mug, “Lee just got a call from Gai, he’ll be here any minute.”

His eyebrows lifted fractionally at this. “That’s cause for joy? Have we developed a little crush on a certain horridly-dressed recruiter?”

The girl almost choked on her mouthful of black coffee before swallowing and giving a melodramatic, “Ew! No, nothing like that!” Shaking her head, she pulled a power bar from her pocket, unwrapped it and set it on the table before her, clapping happily as though the meager offering were a sumptuous feast. “He said we’re meeting with Tsunade-sama in a like, twenty minutes.”

Silver-lavender eyes turned hard suddenly. “Why?”

She shrugged, taking a bite and speaking around the mouthful, “No clue, but we’ve been doing really well lately, so I can only imagine it’s something good. Maybe she wants to congratulate us or give us a bonus or . . . or it’s a really big job!”

Something good, Neji thought, one eyebrow quirking. “Right . . . have you met Tsunade-sama?”

“Funny.”

She got silent for a long moment and the look that suddenly came into her eyes told him he would not like the turn the conversation was about to take. “Hey, Neji . . . .”

“Yes, Ten?”

“Do you, ya know . . . ever have second thoughts about, well . . . us?”

“No,” he said simply, snapping the paper and pointedly dropping his gaze back to the printed words.

“Oh,” Tenten hissed, puffing out her cheeks, “you’re so cold Neji.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“But . . . I mean, I’ve been trying to dissect it in my head, ya know? Trying to figure out what went wrong and, I mean, things were good between us, right?”

He repressed the nearly overwhelming urge to sigh. “You want brutal honesty?”

“Not like you know how to give any other kind,” she replied sourly, taking a ferocious sounding bite of her miniscule breakfast.

“Why do you ask something like this out of the blue? We’ve been finished for months, Tenten.”

She shrugged again. “I just thought that if it was me- like if I make a bad girlfriend or whatever- then I should know so I can work on my weak points so my future relationships will turn out better.”

Neji sucked his teeth for a moment as he shook his head, his eyes not once leaving the article before them. “You weren’t a bad girlfriend, our personalities just turned out to be a bad combination in a relationship and it was in danger of spilling over into our work.”

“Oh,” she said simply, swirling the power bar in her coffee before taking another bite and again speaking with her mouthful- one of the myriad habits that had grated on his nerves endlessly when they’d been a couple. “Then how come I remember things being good between us?”

“Because the sex was hot,” he replied casually.

Tenten’s cheeks reddened instantly. “How can anyone say something like that in such a disinterested tone?”

“You’re the one who wanted brutal honesty. If it makes you feel any better, I could say the sex was really hot- and it was- but that would only make you blush harder.”

“Hmph,” she crossed her arms under her breasts, turning her face away, “you’re not even looking at me, how would you know I’m blushing?”

At this, he looked up from the paper, smirking just a little. “Because you’re predictable.”

She gave a tiny, offended gasp, but was cut off from responding as Lee waltzed into the room looking like he was on cloud nine. “You, too?” Neji bit out quietly, “You morning people make me sick.”

Lee took a seat, beaming at his fellow unit members. “Gai’s outside the door and I overheard him talking on the phone.”

“And again I say, you too?” Neji muttered, turning the page.

“What was he saying?” Tenten asked, feelings nearly bruised from her conversation with Neji already forgotten- if Lee was in such a good mood it couldn’t possibly be bad news.

“Only that when we meet with Tsunade-sama we’ll be meeting with Kakashi’s team as well!”

Tenten’s lips spread in a grin broad enough to make the Cheshire Cat jealous. “Really? Oh my god!” Immediately she was bouncing up from the table again and dashing out of the room.

“Where are you going?” Neji inquired in a subdued, but nonetheless bewildered tone.

She called over her shoulder as she continued toward her room, “Well, I can’t very well meet that Uchiha guy for the first time looking like this!”

“Oh,” Lee was already saying, not really noticing that Neji suddenly seemed in no mood for one of his melodramatic monologues, “and this means that I will be able to meet that beautiful, delicate blossom. I, with my youthful good looks, will sweep her off her feet. That long, pink hair . . . it’s probably silky to the touch. Of course, it must be, it’s only fitting for a man such as-”

“And we still don’t even know her name, huh?” Neji’s cold voice almost knocked Lee off of his happy, heart-shaped cloud.

“No, but what does it matter? For a girl like her, it could only be something . . . .”

Lee’s voice continued to drone on and on, but Neji simply wasn’t listening anymore. That night they’d watched their rival unit, Neji had not once looked at the girl’s face- no, not after catching first glimpse of that hair color. It hadn’t really been a lie when he’d implied that he’d gotten a look at her, he’d merely sidestepped the truth. Yes, that was all.

He’d only once met a girl locks that shade and he didn’t want it to be her. He grumbled under his breath as he rethought that notion . . . it was more like he wanted it to be her and didn’t at the same time. Lee’s observation only made his instant agitation worse- green eyes.

Why did they have to be green?

ooooooooooo

The car ride to Tsunade’s estate was anything less than comfortable. Kakashi was riding shotgun and one of their head boss’s drivers was at the wheel. Funny, Sakura thought almost sourly, just yesterday this wouldn’t have been such a problem. But then Naruto- who she was going to kill if he didn’t knock off the antics- dived into the backseat first, glancing pointedly over his shoulder at her and Sasuke as he did so; making them both aware that it was because of the scene he’d witnessed in the training room.

He’d given her no choice but to sit beside Sasuke, with his leg pressed right up along hers, his bicep brushing against her shoulder so that she could feel the warmth of his skin through the sleeve of his dark blue turtleneck. It wasn’t so bad, she told herself a few hundred times, but then the driver took a sharp turn that sent Naruto all but slamming into her, forcing Sakura’s body tightly against Sasuke’s.

When even this did nothing to jar the usually raucous trio- even Sasuke was never this quiet- out of their silence, Kakashi turned his head towards them, watching from the corner of his lone good eye. Sakura was blushing, though that was nothing new when it came to any type of physical contact with Uchiha Sasuke, but this was a markedly deeper shade of crimson blotching her cheeks than usual, and that furious, nervous nibbling on her bottom lip- didn’t she say that was a habit she was trying to break?

No, that certainly wasn’t the strange part. The strange part was the moment after the car righted itself- and the driver screamed obscenities out the window at the vehicle that’d nearly crashed into them. With his fellow unit members toppled onto him as they were, Kakashi had been certain that Sasuke would have thrown them both across the back seat, but . . . it didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, the dark haired young man simply reached across Sakura and roughly shoved Naruto up against the opposite door.

Nothing in his expression changed, as though it had been the most natural reaction in the world. And perhaps for some it would have been, but not for him. It became even odder when Sakura attempted to skitter back to her own seat and was stopped instantly by a side-long glance from Sasuke that left Naruto snickering to himself.

Kakashi turned forward again as the car pulled into the estate’s underground garage, one eyebrow quirking as a slip of a half-grin graced his lips. Seems someone had an interesting morning.

Indeed, as they entered the mansion, as they trailed through the lavishly decorated halls, even as they were escorted into Tsunade’s office and respectfully greeted Japan’s most powerful female crime boss, not a single one of them made a peep. The four took their seats and Kakashi caught Naruto’s elbow for the merest second, giving him a you will fill me in on this later look as he noted that the placement of extra chairs in the office did not go unnoticed by his unit.

After a long moment of nodding blindly at the group, the artificially youthful-faced beauty moved her honey colored eyes from the computer screen set to one side of her desk to look at them. Taking in the direction of their gazes as well, she removed her reading glass and pinched the bridge of her nose lightly as she let out a long, deep sigh.

Fixing Kakashi with a bored yet hard stare, she said, “You didn’t bother to fill them in at all, did you?”

Suddenly all three turned in a comically uniform fashion to stare at him also and he gave a lopsided grin, that lone eye crinkling as he scratched at the skin beneath his black leather eye patch. “No, I find that suspense keeps them on their toes. It’s good for them, really.”

Tsunade sighed again as she folded her hands on the desktop. “Next month, I will need you to undertake a very big job.”

The unit exchanged glances before Sasuke spoke up- the only one who didn’t really care if anything he said came out sounding insolent. “Next month? Tsunade-sama, did you really call us in here just for that?”

Her eyes turned hard as they locked on Sasuke’s, but, as expected, he wasn’t fazed in the slightest by her grim look. “I also said it’s a very big job; so to the fact that you will need to work jointly with another unit to accomplish your objective.”

Instantly their silence ended Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke all beginning to sputter protests. Tsunade held up one crimson-nailed hand and the room miraculously fell quiet once more.

She opened her mouth to speak, but was unceremoniously interrupted as the intercom beside her hand crackled to life, “Tsunade-sama, the other unit has arrived.”

Narrowing her eyes pointedly at the group before her, she pressed the switch, “Perfect timing; send them right in.”

They turned just in time to see the door being thrown open so hard it seemed ready to fly off its hinges as Maito Gai breezed into the room. He smiled brightly and Sakura wanted to groan, she was still having headaches from the first time- the one and only time- she met the boisterous, gods-awfully dressed man. As a former member of the same unit Kakashi had once been in, Gai had declared the silver-haired man his ‘eternal rival’ and seemed to feel the need to begin every conversation concerning Kakashi by announcing that fact . . . even if another Kakashi-centric discussion had only ended two seconds earlier.

“Ah, Kakashi,” Gai began offering the other man a hearty handshake, not noticing as the three young people in the room mouthed his next words with perfect timing, “my eternal rival.”

“Hello, Gai,” Kakashi responded with a sigh as the infamous braggart then turned to their boss to give a deep bow. “Now, Kakashi, I’ll understand if your unit has some trouble keeping up with mine. After all, there is no way your organizational skills or training could ever compare with the standards I expect.”

The room fell silent again before Kakashi looked up at Gai, seeming as though he’d just been roused from a nap. “I’m sorry, Gai, did you say something?”

Gai’s unnaturally thick eyebrows twitched for a moment as his face fell. “WHAT? How do you-”

“Enough rambling, Gai,” a deep, yet noticeably bored and even voice said from somewhere in the corridor.

Sakura’s heart stopped cold at the sound of it, instantly widened green eyes locking on the entryway. No, no, no, it can’t be!

Three people filed into the room behind Gai, but Sakura could only register one of them. Her breath caught in her throat as their gazes met and for a moment the rest of the world seemed to fall away. He looked exactly like she remembered; those beautiful pale eyes, that lightly tanned skin, the long, glossy chocolate brown hair still held in place by a low tied ponytail. She tried not to let the sudden heat she was feeling spread through her as her gaze dropped down for the merest second of its own accord to rest on those perfect lips.

There was no denying that it was Hyuuga Neji . . . the only man with whom Sakura had ever had a one night stand. Oh, but what a night it had been . . . .