Hot Water

-

“Ugh, you’re with the Ice Bitch and his squad,” Sasuke says distastefully. “You’ll have an even colder winter than the rest of us.” …Luckily, Sakura doesn’t know just what lengths Itachi is going to go to prove his younger brother wrong. [ItaSaku]

Existing on the obviously alternate universe pretext in which the massacre so did not happen. As a result, Team Seven is intact and not just dysfunctional, but lovingly dysfunctional, and this story operates under the premises that Tsunade has mandated one medic be a part of every ANBU squad, and Sakura just happens to serve as the medic on the squad that Itachi leads.

-

“Open it!” Naruto whines; he flops across the outdoor table at Ichiraku Ramen, before grabbing a bottle of horseradish sauce and brandishing at her menacingly. “Or else!”

Sakura rolls her eyes at him, promptly confiscates the bottle of horseradish sauce, and then hits him lightly on the head with it. “It’s just my schedule of missions through the winter, Naruto. Nothing especially…exciting.”

Naruto squeaks, aghast, and clutches at his orange-scarf-covered throat melodramatically, as if she had knifed him. Sasuke, always a man who prefers action over words, reaches over and punches him lightly. “Calm down, dumbass. Not everybody gets as excited over mission schedules as you do.”

Naruto pouts exaggeratedly, rubbing the now-sore shoulder. “Come on, Sakura-chan. Prove the bastard over here wrong. I just want to see if you’ve got any missions with us over the winter, you know?”

Sakura sighs, her glove-clad fingers fumbling with the clasp on the mustard-yellow envelope as she pulls the scroll out, making sure to hold on tight so that the wind can’t blow it away. Naruto nearly squeals in excitement, and even the usually nonchalant Sasuke leans in, reading over her other shoulder.

She takes in the considerable list of assigned missions with a slight nod; there is nothing out of the ordinary, after all, but Naruto sighs deeply, obviously disappointed. “You’re not with us at all this winter, Sakura-chan.”

It may just be the cold, but Sasuke’s lip curls a little in distaste. “…Ugh, you’re with the Frigid Ice Bitch and his squad. As usual.”

Sakura draws her jacket closer around her with a frown. “Sasuke-kun!” she chides halfheartedly, “Don’t call your brother that. He’s…” the medic-nin hesitates slightly, searching for the right words. “…Really shy, but a decent sort nevertheless?”

Sasuke and Naruto may disagree on many counts and spend more time calling each other bastard and dumbass than their own proper names, but at this particular moment, they both exchange glances and burst out laughing hysterically.

“Oh, Sakura-chan,” Naruto fairly sniffles with glee, before hugging her around the shoulders affectionately. “Intelligent, beautiful, kickass, and with a sense of humor like that…you’ll go far.”

“Naruto!” She kicks him in the shin indignantly, but he only grins in his irrepressible way.

“It’s shocking,” Sasuke observes dryly, “but I actually agree with the dumbass on this one.” He nods toward the snow swirling toward the ground. “My apologies, but it looks like you’ll have an even colder winter than the rest of us.”

“Itachi isn’t a frigid ice bitch, though,” Sakura attempts to defend the absent Uchiha heir – in all honesty, he is a bit cold, standoffish, and could even be considered downright weird, but two and a half years of working almost continuously with him and his ANBU squad have given her some degree of personal liking for the older male.

“You’re right,” Sasuke concedes, after a moment of thought, although his dark eyes glint in a very rare moment of wicked humor. “He’s the Frigid Ice Bitch. You should give him the respect he deserves, Sakura – after all, we all know how hard he’s worked to earn the title.”

Naruto snickers, before high-fiving Sasuke, who decides that he will deign to accept the friendly gesture. Sakura gives both of them dirty looks. “Really mature.”

Naruto rolls his eyes. “Please, Sakura-chan – you could uproot a tree and beat both of us over the head with it, but Sasuke the bastard has been calling his brother that since we all turned fifteen, and I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon.”

“Yeah, so stop moping,” Sasuke drawls, before standing up and nodding toward Naruto. “Get up, dumbass. We’re going to be eating crappy mission food for the rest of winter, so we may as well get a decent meal while we still can.”

He begins to walk away, and Naruto throws a regretful look back at his favorite ramen store as Sakura grabs him by the arm, and they both run to catch up with Sasuke. “Wait up,” Naruto gasps, massaging a stitch in his side. “Where can we get a meal more decent than Ichiraku Ramen’s delicious dinner specials?”

Sasuke smirks at the sheer irrationality of his former teammate’s ramen obsession. “We’re going to my house. Now hurry up before I change my mind.”

Despite the sudden expression of sheer glee that spreads over Naruto’s face at the mere prospect of Uchiha Mikoto’s legendary cooking, Sakura stops dead, snow or not. “No, Sasuke-kun,” she says firmly. “We’re not going to freeload.”

Sasuke turns around, making a small, irritated sound in the back of his throat, as he stomps back and grabs her arm unceremoniously. “Shut up. Mother loves you and Naruto as much as she loves the Ice Bitch and I, and you know that. She’s always pestering me to bring you two around more often, anyway.”

Sakura protests, but Naruto grabs her other arm and aids Sasuke in tugging her toward the direction of the Uchiha compound. “He’s got a point, Sakura-chan,” Naruto acknowledges, raising an eyebrow suggestively. “Remember the Game Plan?”

Upon hearing those two fateful words, Sakura actually buries her heels into the snowy ground, blushing hard enough to generate heat. “Naruto!”

During the span of time that they were around twelve to fourteen, and still did more missions with each other than without, Naruto had spent enough time at Sasuke’s house to actually consider it his primary residence, and Sasuke and Naruto had dragged her over every Friday and during weekends. Mikoto had taken to both Naruto and Sakura immensely, and treated them as if they were ‘her own, but nicer,’ as Sasuke grouchily put it; to the extent where Naruto concluded that, since he was practically part of the family already, if Sakura ended up marrying Sasuke – or whatshisname, right, Itachi, because I don’t think she would be all that picky – Mikoto would, actually, die of happiness.

That had been back when Sakura had still had the hugest crush ever on Sasuke, and counted it as a personal triumph that, when Naruto mentioned Itachi as a possibility, even jokingly, Sasuke looked roughly as if he had swallowed a lemon.

It was a good five years ago now, but Sakura still blushes as hard as she did on that day, Naruto still snickers, obviously proud of himself, and Sasuke, again, looks as if he has been forced to swallow a lemon – even though age and maturity have now given him the ability to hide that look with a smirk, which is what he does now. “Shut up, dumbass,” he scowls, even though he ignores the grateful look that Sakura shoots at him. “Let’s go, before it gets dark.”

The rest of the walk to the compound is, thankfully, more peaceful. A comfortable silence descends over the former Team Seven, save for the crunching of the snow beneath their feet. Fittingly, through Sasuke’s warning, the sun is setting by the time they enter the gates of the compound. As it has been at least five minutes that he has gone without speaking, Naruto promptly explodes, screeching with his customary exuberance, and begins a headlong sprint toward Sasuke’s house, leaving them behind in a cloud of snow. “I bet you ten days of your mom’s bento that I get there first!”

Sasuke’s left eye twitches alarmingly, and the Sharingan flickers on, seemingly of its own accord. “Over my dead body, Uzumaki.”

Just like that, Sasuke is gone too, following in Naruto’s wake at shocking speed, and Sakura sighs, while heartily despising the immaturity of boys. Because she still gets lost around the Uchiha compound sometimes, she has no choice but to run after them, the freezing evening air nipping at her skin.

Thanks to Tsunade-shisou’s tutelage, it just takes the tiniest bit of chakra to her feet for her to catch up to Sasuke and Naruto easily; the shocked looks on their face are, as always, completely priceless. The back wall of the house, also known as the universally accepted finish line, is approaching rapidly, and she turns back and smirks at her infuriated-looking boys. “Get ready to eat my snow, dumbasses.”

Famous last words.

Then, Sakura collides with something – or, rather, somebody – hard enough to knock her completely off balance. She shrieks and pinwheels, anticipating the fall and doing her best to counteract it, but nevertheless, she topples backwards, hitting one of the solid wooden pillars outside Sasuke’s great-aunt’s house, and subsequently slides to the floor in one spectacularly undignified heap.

Out of the corner of her gaze, she sees Sasuke and Naruto stop dead and blink, expressions of pure horror spreading across their faces, and Sakura looks back at them, puzzled, reaching up to rub the rapidly-forming bump on her head – it hadn’t looked that bad, had it?

Then one icy hand curls around her wrist, pulling her to her feet, and when Sakura looks up into the crimson-and-black gaze of Uchiha Itachi, her esteemed squad leader and the Frigid Ice Bitch of Konoha himself, she can do nothing but squeak, utterly mortified.

…So. Yes. It was, indeed, that bad.

Itachi’s eyes sweep her up and down, effortlessly cataloguing her for any form of severe injury. At long last, he smirks, before brushing past her on his way to his great-aunt’s house; she sees, now, that he is carrying a package of something that might be food. “I can only hope that you show that caliber of extraordinary grace and competence during our mission tomorrow.”

Too aghast to do anything but acquiesce, Sakura nods after him. “Um…I’ll try my best! Or…not…sorry!”

Evidently amused at her degree of embarrassment, Itachi turns away, before rapping thee times on the aged wooden door with his free hand.

Deciding that now would be an appropriate time for intervention, Sasuke and Naruto manage to recover themselves somewhat, and then practically frog-march her away from the door, toward Sasuke’s house. “Damn,” the exuberant blonde whistles, unusually sobered by the encounter. “Sakura-chan, you just ran headlong into the Frigid Ice Bitch and he didn’t like…incinerate you, or anything. He must really like you.”

Sasuke scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous. He burned her well enough; just not – literally.” He is unable to repress the slight smile that works its way across his face upon seeing Sakura’s indignant expression upon the elder Uchiha’s deadpan finally registering in her mind. “I told you he was bitchy,” Sasuke says, with a rather sanctimonious air.

Despite the fact that there are all kinds of protocol against calling one’s esteemed squad leader and prodigy shinobi a bitch, Sakura can’t help but nod in agreement. “Just this once.”

With that, they trudge into the house; by the time Sakura realizes that they are bringing roughly a ton of snow with them, Naruto has already ran ahead, into the well-lit kitchen. Uchiha Mikoto is sitting at the kitchen table, poring over a series of complex scrolls, but as soon as she notices her visitors, she brightens considerably, before standing up and pulling Naruto and Sakura into a tight embrace.

“Sorry to drop in unannounced like this,” Sakura says apologetically, even as Mikoto begins brushing the snow out of her hair in a concerned fashion.

“Yeah, we just missed you too much to stay away,” Naruto cuts in, with a cheeky grin.

Mikoto turns her smile on both of them, before turning to embrace Sasuke. “Don’t be ridiculous; it’s not a problem at all…just this morning, I was telling Sasuke to bring you two over again.” She sighs a little, before patting Naruto on the cheek affectionately. “It seems as if I’ve barely seen you three since you’ve all made jounin.”

They shrug off their heavy jackets and gloves easily, and Sakura winces upon seeing the snow and icy water that they have tracked into Mikoto’s warm, pristine kitchen. “I’ll get to cleaning that up; help me, Naruto—“

Sasuke shrugs, unconcerned. “Don’t worry; the Ice Bi—uh, Itachi, will probably get it on his way back in. Either that or he slips and breaks his spine.”

Naruto and Sakura both hurriedly try to stifle their laughter upon the frosty look that Mikoto levels on her younger son. “There will be no need for anything of the sort.” With a few quick hand seals and a sharp exhalation, a very thin sheet of fire sweeps out over the remnants of snow and slush, drying them in less than a second, before vanishing.

Naruto gapes, amazed, and Sakura almost follows suit, before she reminds herself that before her marriage, Uchiha Mikoto had been renowned as one of Konoha’s finest and most skilled kunoichi. “A slight modification to the Ryuuka,” Sasuke and Itachi’s mother explains modestly, before pulling out chairs for all three of them. “Now, sit, and stay,” she instructs, even though Sasuke rolls his eyes, half-jokingly, behind her back.

While preparing them hot chocolate, Mikoto turns to look at the chattering young adults, and then makes her way over to Sakura with a small frown. “Sakura-chan,” she asks, before reaching out and gently touching the bump on her head. “What happened?”

Sakura winces at the touch, remembering, and reaches up to the affected area, her hand glowing green with her chakra. “I, uh, ran into Itachi on the way here,” she admits sheepishly. “…Literally.”

“And he scared her so much she fell over and bumped her head,” Sasuke completes disdainfully, with a tone that practically screams now-that-the-bastard’s-scared-your-almost-daughter-into-tears-you-have-to-acknowledge-outright-that-you-love-me-more.

Mikoto hurriedly puts large, steaming mugs of hot chocolate in front of all three of them, while discreetly slipping extra marshmallows in Sakura’s, for consolation. Unfortunately, she is completely unaware of the screaming subtleties of Sasuke’s previous statement, and the younger Uchiha deflates, while Naruto elbows him, grinning. “You have a mission with him tomorrow, don’t you?” Mikoto asks mildly.

Sakura nods her assent. “Our squad will be deployed for most of the winter.”

“Mmm,” Mikoto acknowledges, with a somewhat sad smile. She reaches out to pat Sakura’s hand. “I’ll miss you two.”

Sensing the opportune moment, Naruto finishes swigging his hot chocolate, before reaching over and hugging Mikoto to him tightly. “Don’t worry! You still have us!”

“Which is more than enough to keep my hands full,” Mikoto acknowledges wryly.

Sasuke actually smiles a little, before standing and nodding to the two of them. “We’ll be back later, Mother. Naruto, Sakura – come on.”

After bidding Mikoto farewell, the three of them trail down the hallways to Sasuke’s room. “Your house is too freakishly perfect,” Naruto observes grumpily. “It’s just not natural.”

“Just because you can actually see the floors here doesn’t mean it’s freakishly perfect,” Sakura counters, thinking of the permanently disastrous state of Naruto’s tiny apartment with a shudder. “Although it is quite lovely.”

Sasuke sticks his hands in his pockets as they continue into the hallway where his and Itachi’s rooms are. “Thanks. But don’t get all annoying on me when you see my room.”

Sakura frowns. “Why would I get annoying? And besides, I am not annoying!”

Then Sasuke swings his bedroom door open.

“Holy shit,” Naruto gasps, before venturing inside tentatively, and poking what appears to be a moldy apple with his toe. “That’s just…unholy. It’s even worse than my apartment!”

Sakura actually recoils. “Sasuke-kun! That’s disgusting! I am not going in there!”

“So freakin’ annoying,” Sasuke glowers, before grabbing her hand and practically throwing her in the room, before following suit and shutting the door.

Naruto sits cross-legged on the floor, staring up at a towering pile of discarded training clothes with an expression of utter awe on his face. “Sasuke, you may be a bastard, but you’re my hero.”

Sasuke smirks. “I try.”

Cringing, Sakura tiptoes over to the bed, which appears to be the only remotely decent space within the room, and takes a seat. “This is so unsanitary,” she says, with feeling.

“Ugh, you should see Itachi’s room,” Sasuke counters.

Sakura flinches; for some reason, she can’t imagine Itachi with a room that is anything besides perfectly clean and in order. Actually, she can’t imagine Itachi’s room at all. “It’s worse than this?”

“No, it’s so clean and organized that it’s practically sterile. I think he might have obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

The pink-haired kunoichi actually giggles at this. “I never thought of it that way.”

Their conversation settles into a predictable rhythm after this – Naruto and Sasuke mock each other, Naruto catches sight of the picture of the three of them as newly-minted genin and reminisces, Sasuke attempts to correct Naruto’s skewed reminiscing, and Sakura throws Sasuke’s pillows at them and offers the actual versions of what had happened.

“I have never, and most certainly do not, drink blood,” Sasuke growls, after a heated discussion over the events of their chunin exams, and then punches the wall and glares balefully at Naruto and Sakura. “I don’t get why you think you two can logically get off comparing me to a vampire.”

Naruto lifts his hands defensively. “Whatever you say, bastard. Anyway, all this drinking-blood talk has gotten me thirsty. More hot chocolate?”

“Get it yourself, Van Helsing,” Sasuke grouches, although he flings a used sock at Naruto playfully.

Sakura actually tackles Naruto to the ground in an attempt to prevent the nasty-looking sock from making contact with the blonde boy’s skin. “No, I’ll get some; I wanted more anyway,” she replies, dusting herself off and directing a repulsed look around the room. “Just don’t kill each other while I’m gone. And clean up, will you?”

Naruto says yes, while obviously crossing his fingers behind his back, and Sasuke only offers a completely unconvincing “Hn.” Sakura rolls her eyes, fights the urge to grab a moldy shirt off the floor and strangle them with it, and slips out the door.

She is surprised to find that the walk over to the kitchen is much easier than she thought it would be; this may be the very first time that she hasn’t gotten lost on the way. However, when Sakura steps into said kitchen, her eyes widen in horror, and she almost wishes that she had.

Itachi and Mikoto are sitting at the kitchen table, talking quietly; Itachi looks up from his steaming cup of tea and notices her first, raising an eyebrow. Before she can beat a hasty retreat and sprint all the way back to Sasuke’s room, though, Mikoto turns and beams at her. “Sakura-chan! Come and sit.”

“Oh, I don’t want to interrupt your conversation,” Sakura replies hastily, recovering herself – and who would have ever thought that Itachi was the kind of guy who actually sat and talked with his mother over tea, anyway – “…Besides, Naruto and Sasuke-kun just wanted their drinks,” and she nods toward the extra packets of hot chocolate mix on the counter.

Itachi sniffs aristocratically, and mutters something under his breath that sounds like, “Lazy and foolish little brother…”

“He’s not lazy; I was going to make some more for myself anyway,” Sakura defends.

“Sit, Sakura-chan,” Mikoto insists, before pointing at her vacated chair firmly.

Sakura obliges, and grudgingly takes her seat next to Itachi. Privately, she acknowledges that it had hardly been any wonder that Mikoto had been one of the very few kunoichi ever appointed to lead an ANBU squad.

“Itachi was just telling me about the first mission of the season,” Mikoto says brightly, while emptying the packets of hot chocolate mix into the mugs. “Although it’s going to be hard, spending most of the winter away from Konoha…”

“We haven’t done it before,” Sakura murmurs, looking down at her hands. “Normally, we take the other three seasons.”

“The recent spike in Akatsuki activity simply means that we will be deployed for all four,” Itachi allows, in his typically expressionless tone.

Mikoto deposits three mugs of steaming hot chocolate in front of Sakura, before sitting down and looking between the two of them anxiously. She reaches forward and gently brushes a stray lock of hair behind Itachi’s ear, and to Sakura’s surprise, he allows the motherly gesture without comment. “Please take good care of him, Sakura-chan,” she sighs at last. “I worry sometimes.”

The request is somewhat startling, but Sakura manages to nod nevertheless, despite Itachi’s glare. He looks her over again, from head to toe, his gaze finally settling pointedly around the olive-green turtleneck and matching flak jacket that is standard regulation wear for all Konoha jounin. His meaning couldn’t have been more clear if he had yelled it out loud, and Sakura can’t help but blush angrily – she may be a mere jounin, compared to His Royal Iciness ANBU Captain, but she has saved his sorry ass from severe physical injury on several occasions prior to this.

Almost as if he is conscious of where Sakura’s train of thought is going, Itachi’s mouth quirks up a little on one side.

Unaware of the sudden tension in her kitchen, Mikoto turns to her eldest son. “Help Sakura-chan carry the drinks over to Sasuke’s room, please?”

“That’s quite all right, I can manage,” Sakura interrupts hastily.

“Not with three steaming mugs of hot chocolate,” Itachi drawls, standing up. “And especially not if you display more of your legendary grace and composure.”

While she is busy fuming to herself, Itachi smirks, takes two of the cups, and strides out of the kitchen; Sakura grabs the single remaining cup and stalks after him, practically radiating ill temper.

Mikoto, for her part, simply reaches for one of her medical scrolls again, a slight smile on her face.

-

“Careful, Sakura,” Itachi says, after a few moments, and even though she can’t see his face, Sakura can just barely make out the slight humor in his tone. “You’re simmering. And you should take care to be a little bit more subtle.”

Sakura fights the urge to kick him in the back of the knee. “…I don’t do subtle,” she mutters under her breath. “I’m too busy being exceptionally graceful and composed, remember?”

Itachi pauses for a moment, allowing her to catch up to him – he does not trust anybody walking at his back, let alone this volatile kunoichi. “Indeed.”

Sakura’s left eye twitches; she has officially been pushed to the edge. “Stop it! I was just…flustered, alright?”

Itachi considers this for a moment, before raising an eyebrow thoughtfully. “Why, Sakura, do I fluster you?”

Sakura squeaks, thoroughly horrified, for the third time that night. Normally it isn’t this easy to get a rise out of her; maybe Itachi is just one of those thoroughly terrible, awful, horrifying people. Blushing furiously and seeking escape, lest she do something untoward like pouring scalding hot chocolate on her squad leader’s head, Sakura lunges for the nearest door and flings it open.

Through a stroke of luck – or maybe, a lack of luck, the door in question is, indeed, the door to Sasuke’s room. Upon the sudden disturbance, Sasuke and Naruto look up in unison, ceasing their heated attempts at strangling each other with Sasuke’s moldy clothing, and simultaneously recoil in horror upon seeing their two visitors.

For his part, Itachi rolls his eyes minutely. “Foolish little brother, must you react to me in this way every time we meet? It is rather tedious and overdramatic.”

“Ugh, what are you doing here?” Naruto yelps, while trying to hide himself behind a pile of clothing.

Sasuke stands up, and, as an afterthought, grabs a shuriken from his nearby desk, aiming it menacingly at his older brother. “Give me a reason.”

“If I pour this hot chocolate on your face, you will presumably suffer first-degree burns, your skin will melt off your face, your eyesight will be adversely affected, to say the least, and…you will become so hideously ugly that you will lose your fanclub,” Itachi replies, bored. “I consider that reason enough for you to put the weapon down and sit.”

Team loyalties and Itachi’s sheer obnoxiousness while off the field aside, Sakura can’t help but giggle at the look of utter hatred on Sasuke’s face as he drops the shuriken and sits. Itachi crosses the room, resentfully presses the mugs into first Sasuke’s hands, and then Naruto’s, before pausing next to Sakura on the way out. “Tomorrow morning, remember.”

“Yeah,” Sakura mutters resentfully.

The second he is out of earshot, Sasuke sighs dramatically and flops against the bed. “You two were alone in the hallway together – you should have done the world a favor and killed him.”

Naruto has different things on his mind; he frowns at her in a decidedly suspicious manner. “You’re blushing, Sakura-chan. Why are you blushing?”

Sakura attempts to hide her face by taking a sip of her hot chocolate. “…Your brother,” she mumbles, in Sasuke’s direction.

“Ew, did he hit on you or something?” Naruto yelps, aghast.

Sasuke promptly chokes on one of his marshmallows.

“Naruto! No! It wasn’t…anything like that!” Sakura flails. “He’s just, uh…he can be a little bit flustering at times…”

“If, by frustrating, you mean a complete and utter crazy psycho, then we may be on the same page,” Sasuke replies, narrowing his eyes.

Sakura rolls her eyes, setting her empty mug down on Sasuke’s desk. “Yeah, well, if I want to avoid being the target of any further crazy and psychotic episodes, I should probably go – one tiny, miniscule error caused by lack of sleep, and he’s never going to let me forget it.”

Sasuke glares at her. “You aren’t staying for dinner?”

“Don’t give me that, Uchiha!” Sakura protests, striding over and poking him in the chest with a finger. “I am tired of being glared at by your kind!”

Sasuke blinks, momentarily taken aback. “…My kind?”

“Total bastards?” Naruto suggests innocently.

“I was going to say Uchiha males, but you’re close enough,” Sakura smirks.

Sasuke sniffs, looking away and crossing his arms. “I was going to give you some valuable information that you need to know if you intend on spending the winter with my brother and emerging in one piece. But then you just had to go and be annoying again. See you in two weeks, Sakura.”

Sakura stares at him. “What—“

Naruto interrupts by latching her in a tight hug. “Don’t listen to the bastard, Sakura-chan, he’s just pissed that you won’t eat dinner with us and that you’ll be gone for such a long time.”

Sakura hugs him back with equal strength, and they purposefully both give Sasuke their most puppy-eyed looks. “Aww, Sasuke-kun, is that true?” Sakura asks evilly.

“…Hate both of you,” Sasuke mutters under his breath, before standing up. “We’re walking you to the outside of the compound.”

“I’m a capable kunoichi; I don’t need to be walked, Sasuke-kun—“

Sasuke sighs, grabs her arm and then Naruto’s, and drags them outside. “Shut up and come on.”

-

From his place chopping onions in the kitchen, Itachi hears the terrible threesome before he sees them, predictably enough. They fairly skid into the kitchen; at nineteen, they still have not outgrown the tendency to slide through the wooden floors on their sock-clad feet, apparently, although he has the satisfaction of seeing all of them stop dead in mortification upon seeing him.

“…I won,” Naruto croaks inconsequentially.

Itachi smirks slightly, pouring the onions into the frying pan. “The maturity of you and your former teammates never ceases to amaze me, Sasuke.”

He is amused to note that Sakura turns just as red and murderous-looking as his younger brother upon this statement, although her gaze then swivels, astonished, between him, the onions, and the frying pan. “You – cook?” she asks, obviously startled.

“Doesn’t everybody?” Itachi deadpans, arming himself with a bottle of seasoning.

This, as Naruto and Sasuke have learned the hard and painful way, is certainly not the right thing to say to Haruno Sakura; she may be able to smash a stone wall to pieces with two fingers, but all of her previous attempts at making so much as simple dish of ramen have ended in charred ash, disaster, tears, and heartbreak. They look back and forth between Sakura and Itachi in silent trepidation, swiveling their heads as if following a tennis match.

Sakura’s right hand clenches into a fist. “Of course they do,” she grits out, smiling in a way that promises certain death. “How silly of me. Until tomorrow morning, Itachi.”

Itachi raises an eyebrow, now looking positively predatory. “Sleep well, Sakura. And, be careful – it is still snowing outside, and I wouldn’t want you to, ah, crash into any unsuspecting individuals and hurt yourself. That would rather compromise the integrity of our mission, after all.”

All pretenses of civility abandoned, Sakura snarls, stalks out the door, narrowly avoids slipping on a patch of ice, and soon turns a corner and disappears from sight.

Naruto gives a low whistle. “Damn.”

Sasuke glares at his brother, and, as Mikoto is nowhere in sight, decides to take his metaphorical kid gloves off. “Don’t harass my teammate, bitch.”

Itachi arms himself with a nearby steak knife, before advancing on Sasuke, his Sharingan swirling. “I believe that Sakura is, in actuality, my teammate – and vulgar language is a clear indication of a weak mind.”

Naruto laughs nervously, grabbing Sasuke by the back of the jounin vest and beginning to drag him away. “Come on, Sasuke, you remember that Kakashi-sensei always told us going unarmed against crazy guys with steak knives is bad—“

Itachi twirls the steak knife in question between his fingers, smirking a farewell.

“Ugh,” Sasuke mutters, once they are a decent distance away from the kitchen. “He’s such an ass. You should have let me take him.”

“You’d end up with your innards on the floor,” Naruto points out, sensible for once. They are silent for a few moments, before he speaks up again, genuinely curious. “Wait, what was that you were going to tell Sakura-chan about spending the winter with Itachi?”

Sasuke smirks slightly, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Well, I know that they work well together on the field and as a team, or else he wouldn’t have recruited her onto his squad as their permanent medic. And I also know that he’s a complete jerk at home, but on missions, he treats Genma, Shino, and Sakura well. There’s just one thing, during winter, that Itachi’s totally inflexible about. Genma and Shino know already, and they can deal with it, since they’ve been with him for years, but Sakura – not so much. Especially since we know that she can be rather inflexible about it too.”

Naruto shoves him a little. “Cut to the chase, bastard.”

Sasuke yawns and stretches, completely unconcerned. “At the end of a long, tiring day spent hunting Akatsuki, when you’re freezing your ass off and you have blood all over your clothes, what do you want most?”

“…Ramen?”

Sasuke nearly facefaults. “No, dumbass! Think like a normal person for a change!”

Naruto scowls, thinking hard. “…Eh, a long, hot shower, I guess.”

“Exactly,” Sasuke nods. “Now, think of those crappy little motels where all shinobi stay overnight during missions.”

Naruto’s eyes widen in stunned recognition, and because of the horrible memories of the pain and terror that had ensured on the one time he had been stupid enough to steal the hot shower privileges from under Sakura’s feet. “Oh, shit.”

“You’ve got fifteen minutes of hot water, at the very most,” Sasuke clarifies. “It’s general protocol that squad leader showers first, and Itachi is freakin’ anal about getting his long, hot showers. You think he’s bad now – you should see him when he doesn’t get his beauty sleep and his hot shower. It’s just scary. So he goes first, and the other two guys have seniority as full-fledged ANBU members, but they’re gentlemen, so they let Sakura go second. Still—“

“Sorry, but your brother doesn’t strike me as the type who’d be generous and save the hot water for his teammates, let alone his medic, as stunningly gorgeous as she is,” Naruto completes.

“Nope,” Sasuke replies.

“…Oh,” Naruto manages. “Think we should, uh – warn her, or something? That she’s either going to have to deal with icy showers in winter for the next two weeks, or confront your scary brother and demand her rights? Because I think that would be a really nasty sort of surprise.”

Sasuke snickers. “No. In all honesty, I think the ensuing confrontation would be rather amusing, and it’s a pity we won’t be around to see it.”

“You’re a really sick person, you know.”

Sasuke considers this for a moment. “Yeah. I know; it runs in the family, anyway. But you have to admit it would be funny.”

“Yeah,” Naruto admits grudgingly. “I guess.”

“Sakura’s going to have some interesting stories to tell when she gets back. This may be the power struggle of the century.”

Naruto suddenly stops, alarmed. “But what if Sakura-chan finds out, and kills us for not saying anything? It’s like – karma, or whatever.”

Sasuke sneers, albeit in a somewhat friendly manner. “Shut up, dumbass. What’s the worst that could happen over Sakura and Itachi clashing over who gets hot shower privileges?”

Privately – thanks to his apprenticeship with Jiraiya – Naruto can think of a few select, Icha Icha Paradise-worthy, happenings that could, indeed, result from Sakura-chan and Itachi clashing over who would get hot shower privileges. But he refrains from mentioning them, as he doesn’t necessarily want Sasuke to die of a sudden and painful heart attack. Or through a violent hemorrhage through the nose. Whichever comes first.

-

to be continued

As this is my first time writing an actual Team Seven fic, let alone a non-massacre one, any and all feedback would be very much appreciated. :)