Well, NaruSaku has been stalking me for a while now and tonight it finally bunnied me! Also, My dear friend bellzooks has just written a fantstic post-war one-shot that I have just fallen in love with.

Hope you enjoy :D

“No.”

The bright smile that had been working on blinding Sakura just moments before, fell about a thousand miles.

Good, the woman thought vindictively, ignoring the guilty little twinge that pricked her as she turned away from the blond man in front of her.

“But I didn’t even ask you this time!”

Sakura glared at him from over her shoulder, stuffing a tea towel into a glass and cleaning it savagely. The bar was quiet, almost empty, and this idiot was the first one she’d had to deal with all day.

“Replay that sentence in your mind - if you have one - and pay close attention to the words this time. Meaning it’s happened before. Meaning that I’ve had to put up with a whole month of stalking from you!”

The easy grin slid over his face again as he leaned forward and stole one of the cheap paper umbrellas from behind the bar. “Aw, c’mon. You know you like it, Sakura-chan.” And then he winked, flicking open the umbrella - pink, she noticed absently - and sticking the pointy end in his mouth.

“Ow, fuck.”

It would have been a smoother move had he not missed the first time.

Sakura smirked and shook her head. “Serves you right. Remind me again why I told you my name, Uzumaki?”

“Hah!” The blond leapt to his feet and nearly choked on the umbrella. Sakura rolled her eyes and stretched her fingers into the glass to reach the bubbles at the bottom. “You remembered!”

“Remembered what?” she asked exasperatedly. Honestly, she didn’t know why she bothered with this job.

Because you need the cash, remember?

Right. But sometimes she wondered if the money was worth this aggravation. Even if the guy was kind of cute, in a puppy dog sort of way, he was no less annoying for it.

“My name!” He actually managed to say the words around the umbrella without risking his life again.

Shame, that.

“Like I have a chance to forget it. You’re in here every weekend with that asshole friend of yours - ‘Uzumaki Naruto wins at this, Uzumaki Naruto wins at that’. It’s enough to send a girl ‘round the bend.”

Uzumaki dropped back in his seat and continued grinning. Almost by reflex, Sakura scowled. No one should be that happy. Especially not when they were getting shot down.

“You think Sasuke-teme’s an asshole?” the blond asked eagerly.

Well. Truth be told, she’d been more than a little enamoured when he and the idiot had first started showing up at the bar. Hell, she still woke up on the odd occasion with her heart racing, but she’d gotten to know the guy a little more now, and had concluded that he was an asshole. Karin, who worked weekends with her, was yet to catch on.

“I do,” she affirmed, moving the tea towel methodically around the outside of the glass once again. “What I’m trying to decide now, is which is worse. The asshole or the idiot.”

“Heh, no contest.” The umbrella rolled around to the other side of his mouth. His lips, Sakura noted, were full - and always, always smiling. “Teme sucks in bed.”

“Have you tried him?” she replied archly before laughing outright as the idiot nearly inhaled the umbrella.

“Sakura-chan is so mean to me,” Uzumaki whined.

“Yeah, well, you deserve it. Why do you keep trying, anyway? I’m never going to say yes.”

And odd glint came into his blue, blue eyes as he straightened and jabbed a thumb at his chest. “I never give up, I’m--”

“Uzumaki Naruto, trust me, I know.” Nonetheless, there was a small smile playing about her lips. The guy was sort of all right once you got used to his hyperactivity - and Sakura had had an entire month to get used to it.

He noticed it; for an idiot, he was surprisingly perceptive. A hand reached out and poked her cheek. “You’re smi-ling,” he sang.

She slapped his hand away, but couldn’t stop the smile from getting wider. “Stop that!” she ordered, blushing a little. She was acting like some sort of love-struck school girl.

His hands - wide and scarred - reach out and gently tugged the glass out of her hands. “You know, I reckon it’s dry by now, Sakura-chan.”

The blushed deepened and she swore under her breath, grabbing the glass off of him. “It’s not dry until I say it’s dry, all right?”

The umbrella danced across his teeth. “If you say so, Sakura-chan.”

“I do say so,” she huffed. “And - and stop that as well!”

He cocked his head to the side, confused. “Stop what?”

“Saying my name like that!”

“Like how?” And then he smirked, and of all things a shiver rolled down her back. It wasn’t even a very good smirk! “Sakura-chan.”

“You,” she announced. “Are an asshole.”

“I thought that was Sasuke?”

“Yeah, well--” She spluttered a little, not entirely sure how this had gotten so out of her control in the ten minutes or so since Naruto had swanned up to the bar. “You’re both assholes.”

“Huh.”

A pause. Sakura blew out a sigh of relief--

“You know what I think?”

--and carefully resisted smacking her head against the bar.

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” she grit out from between clenched teeth.

Naruto wasn’t fazed in the slightest. Of course he wasn’t. “I think you don’t hate me half as much as you pretend to hate me.”

“Half as much as I really do hate you is still twice as much as I’ve ever hated anyone before in my life.” Okay, blatant lie. If she had to place the look on his face right at that moment, it would be classed under Adorable. With a sub-category of Ohgodsexy.

“Hey! That…uh - wait, what?” He scrunched his face up in confusion, umbrella flicking up to hit his nose and making him sneeze.

“You know what? Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. Just - don’t worry about it.” Sakura suddenly remembered what she was meant to be doing and grabbed another glass to dry.

“All right.” Naruto leaned over the bar again and snagged the spare tea towel from where it was tugged into the waist of her jeans.

“Hey!”

He flashed another grin at her, still chewing on that goddamn umbrella, before picking up a wet glass and starting to dry.

“I’m perfectly capable of doing my job on my own, you know,” she pointed out, slamming the glass down and grabbing another. Naruto’s glass was quick to follow, so she worked even faster on the next one.

He raised an eyebrow - pierced - at her and the umbrella rolled from the right side of his mouth to the left. Idly, Sakura wondered what his tongue was doing behind it before slapping the thought out of her head, horrified.

“Race ya?” Naruto’s voice kicked her out of her reverie.

And since when had he become Naruto, anyway?

“I’m sorry?”

“C’mon, I’ll race you. Bet you I win.”

“N - Uzumaki. I do this for a living. Assuming I did partake in this race, you’d get your ass kicked so hard you wouldn’t be bottoming Sasuke for weeks.”

Once again, the umbrella nearly disappeared down the blond’s throat. Sakura took pity on him this time, reaching forth and gingerly plucking the thing from his mouth and tossing it. Before he could protest about her stealing his toy, she’d shoved another one at him - also pink.

“Aw, is this a sign, Sakura-chan?” he asked, tucking the pointy end once more into his mouth. To his credit, this time he didn’t miss. “Hey, where’re you going?”

She wandered out back and tossed the tea towel before grabbing two fresh ones. “Here.” She snatched his and thrust one of the dry ones at him, cursing inwardly as she realised it was also pink. What the hell, subconscious? “You’re on.”

In a truly masterful display, Naruto used his tongue and teeth to push the - stem? - of the umbrella out as far as it could go without dropping it, before bouncing the thing once or twice, flipping it in the air and catching it.

Sakura stared.

“Mad skills, yeah? Come on, you know you can’t win against this,” he teased, gesturing down his body with his hands.

Sakura flicked him with her tea towel and tried to ignore the way his shirt clung to him in all the right ways. “Didn’t you say something about a bet?”

“Hmm? Heh, you sure you wanna risk it? I mean, I am--”

“Uzumaki Naruto.”

The blond pouted, trademark saying ruined, before what Sakura was sure he thought was a look of cunning crossed his face. She giggled - he really just looked mildly constipated.

“All right. If I win, you have to go on a date with me.”

“Oh, I’m definitely not letting you win now,” Sakura shot back. Somehow, though, the thought of a date with the Uzumaki Naruto didn’t seem to be quite the horrible prospect it would have been when they first started this conversation. “If I win, then, you leave me alone for a month.”

“A whole month?” he complained, and she was shocked to see actual hurt behind the bantering mask. The umbrella nearly slipped out of his mouth.

She pursed her lips. “Two weeks, then.”

“A day.”

That one made her laugh outright. “One week. Or are you afraid you’ll lose?”

The result was like waving red at a bull. “You’re on!”

“Right then.” She smirked. “You ready?”

“Hold on a sec.” He hopped over the bar. Sakura winced, looking around to make sure none of the other patrons had seen him put his ass on the bar. Fortunately, the only people in there at that time of day were middle-aged businessmen whose wives were taking them for everything they had. “All right. Count of three. One--”

“--twothreego!” she cried, and grabbed the nearest glass. Naruto started to laugh at her blatant cheating before making his own lunge for a glass.

It degenerated fairly quickly, from stealing glasses to grabbing the tap and re-wetting them. Of course, when Sakura tried this she ended up getting everything else wet as well, but that hardly mattered. About halfway through the patrons got into it and started laying their own bets, ranging from who would win to how long Naruto would be able to keep that damn umbrella in his mouth.

By the end of it all, however, (and after rewashing several of the glasses) as a result of copious cheating on his part, Naruto had won.

And he was still chewing on the end of the umbrella.

“Heh.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“You owe me a date, Sakura-chan.” He grinned wolfishly - she hadn’t been able to hide the shiver this time.

…Why didn’t she want to date this man again?

“It’s the principle of the matter!” she declared out loud.

Naruto looked taken aback. “What?”

The patrons, damn them, started giving their own input.

“Aw, c’mon girl. He won fair and - well, he won.”

“Run away boy, if you know what’s good for you! She’s a heartbreaker, this one.”

“Oi, get back here, you bastard! The umbrella’s still in his mouth, isn’t it?”

“C’mon, Sakura.” She started, at both the serious tone to his voice and the lack of honorific “It’s just one date. And if it doesn’t work out, you can just blame it on the bet, right?”

Sakura found she couldn’t meet his eyes properly. For some reason, she felt ashamed of being so mean to him for the past month. He hadn’t really done anything to her other than keep trying after catching her on a bad night.

“Well…I suppose one date wouldn’t be so bad.”

There was a mixed reaction from their audience as more patrons collected on their bets. Sakura paid them scant attention, however, having lifted her face back up to Naruto’s eyes which were sparkling like someone had lit a firecracker behind them.

“Seriously?”

“What, are you having second thoughts or something?” she huffed, folding her arms self-consciously. “Or was it all a - mmpf!”

Mmpf being, of course, the sound that Haruno Sakura made when six foot two of blond boy-shape cut her off with the most deliciously toe-curling kiss she’d ever experienced in her life.

Needless to say, he’d removed the umbrella.

Eventually, however, she managed to tear herself away and hit him in the shoulder. “It’s a date, not a marriage proposal!” she exclaimed. “Don’t take liberties!”

Naruto just grave her that grin again. “When do you get off tonight?” he asked.

“Eight. Ino’s doing the late shift.” God, Ino. She’ll laugh till she cries.

“Right.” He leaned forward and kissed her softly on the cheek with chapped lips, tucking something behind her ear before pulling away and vaulting over the bar again. “I’ll pick you up then!”

Sakura smiled after him despite herself, fingering behind her ear to see what he’d left for her.

“Naruto! That’s disgusting!”

The pink umbrella fell to the floor.