Wow, I’m totally overwhelmed by the positive response to the last chapter! Thank you so very much to everybody who was kind enough to review. You guys are the bestest. So cool, as a matter of fact, that I actually used bad grammar in your honor, which hardly ever happens. :)

-

“The Rusty Hangnail,” Sakura hisses into her tiny mouthpiece. “I repeat, the two of them – the blonde artist and the blue shark-man – are staying at The Rusty Hangnail.”

There are a few moments of silence over the other end. “…Sakura, what the hell kinda name is The Rusty Hangnail?” Genma asks, the static doing nothing to lessen the incredulity in his voice. “Are you sure you’re reading the sign right?”

“Of course I’m reading the sign right!” Sakura snipes; she is neck-deep in a freezing, snowy alcove, and hardly in the mood to get any closer and risk detection.

“Calm down,” another, calm voice interjects over the radio. “Shino, send some of your insects within the building, and direct them to the Akatsuki members’ room – they will track their movements.”

“Very well,” Shino replies tersely.

There are a few moments of radio silence. “Completed,” he says, at last.

“Then move out,” Itachi murmurs. “We will meet at room sixteen at the rendezvous point – I have checked it out in advance.”

Sakura mumbles her assent, before pulling herself to her full height and shaking the ice and snow off her. Despite the heavy gloves and jacket, she trembles in the cold, and it takes slightly more effort than usual to gather the chakra to her feet and leap into the treetops.

Their crappy inn is in the neighboring town, twenty-five miles away; it is only too obvious that The Rusty Kunai is in fierce competition with The Rusty Hangnail, but unfortunately for her, it looks as if the Akatsuki members staying at the latter inn have the better deal. The Rusty Kunai is obviously of redoubtable quality, and the kind of place she would keep a ten-mile distance away from, under normal circumstances. Now, however, Sakura has no chance to be picky, even though the place isn’t even heated, for Buddha’s sake.

The receptionist at the desk is a balding, middle-aged man who is drowsing near a telltale bottle of sake. There is a tiny, dilapidated fragment of memo paper stuck to the desk, with the number 16 scrawled above it, and one moldy key left on top of it. Flinching distastefully, Sakura picks the key up between two fingers and trudges down the hallway on the right, quite unconcerned about the large amount of ice and snow she is tracking in.

Room sixteen is at the very end of the hallway, far enough down that the lights mounted on the walls are flickering alarmingly. On top of that, the key is sticky in the lock; in the end, Sakura curses violently, almost breaks the key, and suddenly, the door swings open, and she ends up falling headfirst into the room.

Shino, who had opened the door, manages to reach out and grab her by the shoulder. “Careful.”

Sakura laughs nervously, pulling herself up to a proper standing position. “Thanks, Shino.”

Itachi raises an eyebrow at her, tugging his soaked and icy black hair free from the tie that usually holds it in its low ponytail. “It’s a pleasure to have you join us at last, Sakura.”

Sakura gives him the evil eye, before removing her green flak jacket and setting it down on the bed that Genma is stretched out on, toweling his hair. “The pleasure is all mine.”

Genma snickers under his breath, tossing the towel into Shino’s waiting arms. “Touché.”

Itachi’s gaze flickers over each of his teammates. “I expect that they will not mobilize until tomorrow afternoon, at the least. We have the rest of the night to…unwind.” He pronounces the word as if it is in a foreign language, and Sakura tries her best to stifle her laughter at the expression on his face.

Genma promptly high-fives Shino, and then Sakura, before unearthing a rather sodden pack of cards from one of his pockets. “Poker?”

Itachi rolls his eyes minutely as the Aburame heir and the pink-haired medic join Genma on the rather ratty bed, ready to do battle, despite the fact that they are all shivering with cold. Perhaps he should speak to the Godaime about improving their places of residence during these missions…

Watching Itachi grab his towel and some clothes and disappear into the adjacent bathroom, Sakura sighs softly, looking at her rather suckish hand. Her thoughts aren’t fully concentrated on the game, though, and she almost actually melts with envy upon hearing the gentle purr that indicates the start of what is surely a steaming hot shower. Ugh…the lucky bastard.

She wins two games, and loses one to Shino and one to Genma, before Itachi finally emerges, clad in loose-fitting black pants and a matching shirt. A fair wall of sandalwood-scented steam dissipates into the room, and he practically radiates warmth as he settles onto the other bed. Well – literal warmth, of course. It’s not like the supposed Frigid Ice Bitch of Konoha could be warm in any other way, and a smile tugs at the corners of Sakura’s mouth; that statement had been practically Sasuke-approved.

Genma nudges her lightly, even though his elbow is cold through the material of her green turtleneck. “Go ahead.”

Sakura glances over to him and Shino. “One of you two could go second for once, you know,” she smiles.

“We could,” Shino allows, the corners of his eyes crinkling slightly, above his high collar. “But then we would be leaving you to freeze, and that is hardly the proper thing to do.”

“I love you guys,” Sakura sighs dramatically, before reaching for her smaller duffel bag and dragging it into the bathroom with her. It’s still steamy and sandalwood-scented from Itachi’s shower, and the hot water has thoroughly misted the mirror. The bathroom itself isn’t all that impressive, being small, with just an outrageously turquoise and plastic-y sink, a toilet, and a relatively cramped shower stall, with a sliding frosted glass door, but it will do. The floor is chilled beneath her bare feet, and she strips off her damp clothes as quickly as possible, flinging them into the sink, and steps into the shower, sliding the door shut as she goes.

Itachi has set out the soap and shampoo already, and Sakura fights with the rusty shower knob, prematurely turning the creaky dial to the furthest side of the red twister. She tugs on it, a little harder, frowning, and finally ends up putting her foot on the faucet for leverage, while drawing a little bit of chakra to her hands, until she feels the sudden spurt of water course through the pipes—

-

Outside the room, seasoned shinobi or not; Shino, Genma, and Itachi almost jump when they hear Sakura’s bloodcurdling screech echo throughout their room.

“Hot damn,” Genma murmurs, alarmed. “What the hell? Cockroaches again?”

Shino glances over at their team leader. “I doubt it – Sakura has not gone on any missions with us during the winter season, has she?”

In the bathroom, Sakura’s near-hysterical screams have quieted, although they are now being replaced with a long string of equally loud and very vitriolic profanities.

“…No, she has not,” Itachi allows, and his tone is as emotionless as always, despite the ghost of a smile that flickers over his features.

-

Oh, Buddha.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Sakura mutters under her breath, wrapping her arms around her body and hopping from foot to foot, thoroughly agitated, as the icy water cascades over her. Her every fiber of agonized skin is screaming for her to shut off the damned shower in the first place, but she needs to get clean even though she’s freezing to death, and…

Somewhere else in the inn, an innocent civilian flushes a toilet. Despite her best efforts to maintain stoic silence, she yelps anew, the water now having turned, if possible, even colder.

Much to her horror, she hears a loud knock over the roar of water. “Sakura,” Itachi says impatiently, from the other side of the door. “Are you alright?”

Sakura clutches the tiles and whimpers something unintelligible – probably for the best, as her thoughts at the moment are running along the solid lines of you thrice-damned Uchiha bastard, you used up all the hot water and I’m going to die because of you—

“Sakura,” It’s Genma’s voice this time, and he sounds inappropriately flirtatious. “If you don’t answer our squad leader, I’ll be forced to break down this door and check up on you.”

Shino snorts disapprovingly, in the background.

“I’m fine!” Sakura manages to yell, forcing herself to squirt some shampoo into her trembling hands and work it through her hair, as she tries to back herself against the wall and as far out of the cold water’s path as humanly possible. “I’m! Perfectly! Fine!”

This time, it’s Itachi again, sounding subtly amused. “…If you say so.”

The fact that they can obviously hear her several agonies is hardly any consolation in this already awful situation, and Sakura grits her teeth together with an almost inhuman amount of willpower in an attempt to keep them from chattering. The sheer iciness of the water as it courses through her hair while washing the shampoo out actually gives her a headache; her arms are too busy curled around her body, to protect her sensitive eyes, and Sakura squeaks with discomfort as the shampoo gets into her already-burning eyes.

After the disastrous first attempt at shampooing, for the first time in her life, Haruno Sakura does not follow the proper hair care rules of thoroughly rinsing, scalp-massaging, repeating, and conditioning. Instead, once the shampoo has been properly washed off and flushed out of her now-red eyes, she hastily rubs the soap on her nearly blue skin, while running in tight circles around the cramped stall, in an attempt to keep her body from slipping into hypothermia. Hell, she’s even colder now than she had been before, and that’s just sick.

When she finally punches the shower knob back into place, the jets of water subside, leaving Sakura trembling in the stall and barely managing hold the thin black towel around herself, while leaning against the counter for support. Dazedly, she realizes that this, without doubt, has been one of the worst off-field mission experiences she has ever suffered through.

“Sakura?” This time, it’s Shino’s voice from the other end of the door; missing Genma’s flirtatiousness and Itachi’s obvious sadistic pleasure in her situation, his tone is gently concerned. “…Are you okay?”

Sakura blinks at her drowned-and-hypothermic-rat reflection in the mirror, calming her shivering enough to speak normally. “I’m – okay. Why?”

“…Um. You were…whimpering.”

Upon hearing this statement, Sakura bangs her head against the towel rack several times.

They were never going to let her forget this.

-

The second Genma, Shino, and Itachi notice the knob on the bathroom door turn, they all quickly school their expressions into ones of completely blank composure.

The door bangs open, and Sakura tiptoes into the bedroom. Genma and Shino, being somewhat less stoic than their notorious team leader, both flinch at her appearance, while Itachi merely regards her impassively from his place on the second bed. Her eyes are startlingly red, and she is pale, and wearing an outrageously orange pair of loose plaid pants. If that isn’t galling enough, as well – a dark blue t-shirt with the Uchiha fan emblazoned on the bottom left corner. The first obviously had been a gift from the Uzumaki, since Itachi doesn’t think that anybody would actually go out and purchase something like that on their own, and the second had been likely misappropriated from his foolish little brother.

Or, perhaps, given by his foolish little brother?

Itachi’s eyes narrow at the very thought; along with the idea that, judging by her sleeping clothes, she might as well tattoo the words Property Of Team Seven on her forehead.

Sakura’s arms are wrapped very tightly around her chest, and she appears to be trying valiantly to keep herself from shivering. Her shoulder-length hair sticks out at odd angles, as if she had just brought chakra to her hand and ran it through her hair erratically in order to dry it as fast as possible.

Genma winces in sympathy, but quickly seizes his opportunity, patting the spot next to him on his bed. “I’m showering next, but feel free to make yourself comfortable.”

“No, thank you,” Sakura says levelly, and both Genma and Shino silently thank Buddha that her glare isn’t directed at them.

Itachi simply raises an eyebrow at her in response.

Genma smirks and glances over at his squad leader, who recognizes the look in his eyes instantaneously, and smirks back, offering his permission.

“Oh, Sakura, if you want to sleep over there with Itachi, that’s fine with me,” Genma offers innocently, while grabbing another towel and a spare set of clothes and waltzing off into the bathroom. “Besides, he’s still probably all nice and relaxed and warm from his shower, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind sharing some of that heat…”

The door slams shut behind him.

Sakura’s hand actually twitches with the suppressed desire to grab one of her discarded shuriken and fling it through the door.

Shino has to cough to mask his laughter, before hiding his amusement at the entire situation under the façade of meditation.

Sakura is uncomfortably aware of the heat rising in her cheeks – shouldn’t it be medically impossible to blush while you’re freezing your ass off, anyway? Their sleeping arrangements are usually easy to figure out; Itachi always sleeps on the floor, without fail, and despite her protests, Genma and Shino always insist on giving her one bed to herself, and they take turns by night sleeping on the other vacant bed. But now, Itachi stretches out on the bed closest to the window, which is always hers, showing no intention of moving, and she can practically feel his stupid red eyes boring a hole through the side of her head.

Sakura almost doesn’t trust herself to speak. In her current state of mind, she’s as likely to launch herself at the Uchiha clan heir and strangle him to death with her discarded towel as to say something civil, and even though Sasuke would probably thank her profusely for the act and possibly even propose marriage out of sheer gratitude alone, it wouldn’t be a very politically savvy thing to do. So she settles with fixing an Itachi-approved glare on the inconsiderate-crazy-psycho-frigid-ice-bitch-hot-water-stealing bastard himself.

Seemingly unaffected by her expression, which has struck a deep fear born out of self-preservation into the hearts of shinobi of the likes of Hatake Kakashi himself, Itachi pulls himself into a standing position, brushing past her on the way to recover his possessions. Maybe he brushes against her purposefully, or maybe not, but either way, Itachi’s arm and shoulder touches hers, and Sakura actually jumps – he is warm. Very warm.

Hiding her discomfiture, Sakura walks over to the bed and slips under the covers, pulling them securely over her head – they are thin to the degree of being blatantly unsatisfying, and she shivers, curling up into a ball.

Shino switches off the lamp, although Sakura can just barely see Itachi’s shadow slink to the place between her bed and the window, where he usually sleeps. Suddenly, though, a light, soft weight is thrown on her, and Sakura yelps, startled, before extricating herself from the covers. It is dark, but her grip registers a something soft and fleecy on top of her, and as her eyes adjust to the lack of light, she realizes that is a midnight blue fleece blanket, with the ubiquitous Uchiha fan sewn into the border.

“What—“ she begins to ask, but Itachi’s voice silences her.

“Mother thought you would have difficulty adjusting to the cold,” he murmurs grudgingly, from his place on the floor. “She asked me to bring an extra.”

Sakura battles with her conscience for a few moments, but resigns herself with what she is about to do by realizing that it is more for Mikoto than Itachi. “…Thanks,” she mumbles.

Itachi gives one of his typical monosyllabic replies, and silence falls over the small room as Genma shuts the shower off. Not a whimper of discomfort to be heard there, Sakura muses tiredly, drawing the fleece blanket tighter around her chilled body. It is some consolation to think about forms of revenge, of course – perhaps, when she gets up in the morning, she could accidentally step on Itachi’s spleen.

Or maybe, maybe, this actually hadn’t been a cruel and sadistic form of revenge for running into him yesterday. Maybe she should give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it had been an accident, and after seeing her obvious distress as a result today, Itachi will be more considerate next time.

Itachi. Considerate.

Sakura has to bite the edge of her pillowcase to stop herself from laughing.

But still – Sakura curls her toes around the edges of the blanket – she’ll be a good kunoichi, and wait to attack until she sees the whites of her enemy’s eyes. Until tomorrow night.

-

Sakura hates shark-men.

She repeats this mantra to herself over and over and over again, cursing the name of Hoshigaki Kisame and his stupid chakra-depleting sword. There had been a brief skirmish earlier, and the sword had barely even brushed her side, thanks to Itachi, Genma, and Shino’s timely intervention, but that tiny bit of contact alone had been enough to remove a significant amount of chakra. And besides, even her teammates’ intervention hadn’t stopped Kisame from throwing and then attempting to drown her into one of the small salt water oceans that had been generated by his jutsu.

Luckily, Kisame is under the impression that their team had retreated to Konoha after getting a handle on the location of him and his partner, but unluckily, that is not the case.

She barely has enough energy to pull her soaked clothes off and place them in their usual position in the sink, before getting into the shower stall. Despite her fatigue, Sakura hesitates before reaching for the knob – Itachi had been in here immediately before, but her resolution of last night had been to give him the benefit of the doubt, until it is proven that he is, in actuality, a inconsiderate-crazy-psycho-frigid-ice-bitch-hot-water-stealing bastard. And perhaps, since she had almost been injured on the field today, he might have been a little bit more merciful…

Taking a deep breath and hoping for the best, but fearing the worst, Sakura tugs hard on the shower knob.

This time, when she is assaulted by the stream of freezing water, Sakura only yelps once, before flailing, falling backwards, and hitting the tiles at the back of the stall. Through yet another unfortunate stab of fate, she slips on the fallen bar of soap, and lands firmly on the floor with a screech, half on her side and half facedown, with her cheek pressed close against the bar of soap, as the icy water pounds on her back. Appropriately enough, the suds have gotten into her mouth, serving to somewhat stifle her frustrated swearing.

“Sakura,” Itachi asks, from the other side of the door, after a terse knock. “Genma has advised me that it would be appropriate to ask you if you require assistance.”

It takes a few moments for Sakura to claw herself back into a standing position, and she slides the frosted glass shower door open. She stares at the bathroom door, killing intent in her eyes, before, in a sudden fit of frustration, she grabs the bar of soap and flings it at the door, hard; it connects with the wood with a damp thud and a veritable explosion of suds.

There are a few moments of awkward silence, broken only by the splashing of the infernally cold water.

“Sakura,” Itachi says dryly. “From the sound, I can only assume that you have thrown the soap at the door in a childish fit of anger. Please pick it up, as I happen to be particularly fond of that bar of soap, and also because I speak for Genma and Shino as well, when we say that we do not wish for you to smell of salt water for the rest of the night.”

“I hate you,” Sakura mutters under her breath. Without even bothering to shut the shower off, she pulls herself out and drags herself to the door, picking up the bar of soap, and then returns to the icy shower, shivering all the way.

She hears Itachi walk away from the other side of the door, and practically hears him smirk at her expense too. As she shampoos her hair rather viciously, Sakura glares at the adjacent bedroom.

That’s it. She had attempted to be kind, she had attempted to give him the benefit of the doubt and one day to redeem himself after using up the entire tank of hot water after the first time – and this is how Itachi repays her?

A positively evil look comes over Sakura’s face as she tilts her hair back into the path of the water, flinching as she does so.

At this exact moment, Sakura isn’t sure how she is going to do it, or when, but one thing is absolutely certain: Uchiha Itachi, Frigid Ice Bitch of Konoha, is so going to pay for this.

-

“So, Genma,” Sakura says airily, despite the fact that the two of them are watching The Rusty Hangnail for any sign of Akatsuki movement, and airy conversations certainly have no place in a stakeout. She searches for any possible way to make her coming statement sound less awkward, but finds nothing.

“…Um. How have your showers been, lately?”

Genma fixes her with an incredulous look, and his senbon almost falls out of his mouth, before he manages to recover himself somewhat. “Why, my showers have been great, Sakura. How about yours?”

Sakura blushes, despite herself. “You know very well how my showers have been.”

Genma smirks, even as he redirects his gaze to the inn. “Yeah. I swear I’ve never had so much fun listening to anybody shower before. You’re very…vocal, you know?”

Sakura elbows Genma sharply in the ribs.

The older jounin raises his hands defensively. “Okay, fine, I’ll cease any and all sexual innuendos for the next five minutes.”

Sakura rolls her eyes affectionately. “Good. Anyway, what I wanted to know is – does Itachi always, uh, use up all the hot water?”

Genma nods knowingly. “So that’s what all the tension is about. And yeah, he does. Shino and I aren’t picky about hot or cold water, but Itachi kinda needs his long, hot showers to function like a normal individual.” He winces upon realizing the incongruity of what he has just said. “…Well, not a normal individual, exactly. It just keeps him in as close to a good mood as he can ever get.”

Sakura sighs, resting her forehead in a snow bank. “…Ugh, I’m not going to survive this next week and a half, let alone the entire coming winter.”

“Aww, poor Sakura,” Genma teases lightheartedly. “Look, if you feel that strongly about it, I’m sure Itachi wouldn’t object if you asked him to share.”

Sakura stares at him. “…Share?”

Genma smirks. “Yeah. As in, share the hot shower. As in, you two, together, in the shower, hot, steamy—“

The need for discretion aside, Sakura promptly slams a snowball into his face.

“Owww,” Genma whines, nursing what may possibly be a fractured nose. “That was unnecessary!”

“You said no sexual innuendoes for five minutes, idiot!” Sakura whispers, infuriated. “That was less than five minutes! And that was…vile!”

“It was too good to pass up,” Genma wrings snow out of his hair. “And it does solve both of your problems, along with saving water. Gotta help the environment, you know. And, above all, it would be hot. No pun intended.”

Now beyond the status of infuriated, Sakura kicks him in the shin repeatedly and viciously, while trying to rid the highly objectionable – but hardly unpleasant; quite the opposite, as a matter of fact – mental images that have suddenly inundated her mind, before collapsing in a sitting position and burying her head in her hands. “…Ugh.”

Genma pats her head. “Cheer up, Sakura. It was just a friendly suggestion.”

She stands up again, unable to stop herself from smiling back at him. “Bit extreme, though. I’ll start with just…trying to get back to the room faster tonight?”

“Small steps,” Genma agrees, before their conversation fades into a comfortable silence, as they continue the stakeout.

-

As she slips in through the window to their small room at the inn, the setting sun framing her back, Sakura allows herself a smirk of satisfaction. Genma had very considerately offered to handle the last hour of the stakeout on his own, and she doesn’t sense Shino or Itachi’s chakra signatures anywhere in the vicinity. Everything is completely quiet, and in the privacy of the room, Sakura punches the air triumphantly. She strips off her ice-covered jounin vest and flings it on the bed, before advancing on the bathroom door, which is opened just a crack, like Shino had left it that morning.

Sakura’s fingers have just begun to curl around the hem of her green turtleneck and pull it up, as she nudges the bathroom door fully open with her hip and steps inside, her shirt already half off.

Then, however, things most decidedly stop going right.

Uchiha Itachi, clad in nothing but a thin black towel wrapped around his hips, obviously just having emerged from the shower, draws back slightly from the mirror, looking somewhat startled at having the plucking of his eyebrows interrupted in such an abrupt fashion. “Sakura, what is the meaning of this?” he asks silkily, the tone of his voice displaying nothing but subtle amusement, even as he eyes her up and down.

Sakura just squeaks and takes one step back, completely and utterly mortified and horrified and terrified and all kinds of other negative adjectives ending in –fied. All too suddenly, she remembers the incriminating position of her hands and her shirt and the inches of exposed skin, and her suddenly nerveless grip slackens on the thin green material until it drops back into place.

Itachi takes advantage of her wide-eyed and speechless state to smirk, turning back to his pursuit of eyebrow-plucking. “One would assume that, after seven years of working on various three-man teams, you would learn to knock before entering a bathroom.”

Sakura mumbles something incoherent, before, much to her eternal shame, rushing out of the bathroom and slamming the door after her. Launching herself onto the nearest bed, she promptly does something that she hasn’t in about a year, and curls up into a ball and buries her head in her hands, thoroughly aghast at herself.

Itachi is not hot. Her mildly psychopathic squad leader is most certainly not the most handsome man she has ever seen in her entire life.

A few moments pass, before Sakura commences trying to slap said traitorous thoughts out of her mind.

But then, she’s never been good at lying to herself.

Sakura flings herself facedown on the bed with a moan of despair, and not caring that she is nineteen and totally too old and mature for such things, pounds the covers with her fists in sheer frustration. After that one ill-fated date with Sasuke when the two of them had been sixteen, she was supposed to be completely and totally over her Uchiha fascination! That entire chapter of her life spent adoring dark-haired, dark-eyed, broody, freakishly handsome and insanely powerful men was supposed to be done with! Despite the fact that she and Ino had nursed major crushes on Shisui throughout their years as Academy students and genin, and despite the fact that she and Tenten had privately agreed that Uchiha Fugaku was, yeah, old enough to be their father, but hot damn, was he fine…

Although, Inner Sakura offers, unbidden, he’s got nothing on his eldest son.

Upon this sentiment from her unconscious mind, Sakura actually cries a few tears of pure frustration and attempts to suffocate herself with her pillow.

Her anguished suffering is interrupted by Shino stepping into the room, bearing a veritable tower of Styrofoam containers that smell strongly of sesame chicken. He stops dead upon seeing her. “…Sakura?”

“I’m fine,” she assures him weakly. “Just had some, uh…difficulties to work through. But I’m good now.”

As if seeking to purposefully contradict her previous statement, Itachi emerges from the bathroom again, fully clothed, and with unusually fresh-looking eyebrows. If Shino notices that Sakura carefully avoids any and all eye contact, even as the elder Uchiha seats himself a respectable distance away from her, he doesn’t mention it, and the three of them eat in comfortable silence until Genma shows up, when, as usual, all havoc breaks loose.

-

They have finished eating and are lounging casually around the room – well, Genma is lounging casually and Shino and Sakura are playing Go Fish – before Itachi clears his throat lightly and glances over at his teammates. “You three should shower,” he suggests impassively, although his gaze lingers for a fraction of a second too long on the pink-haired kunoichi. “I recommend we turn in early, if we are to track the targets to the border tomorrow morning.”

Genma nudges Sakura rather mischievously. “You heard the man, Sakura. Go ahead.”

Trying her best to hide her feelings of mingled surprise and apprehension, Sakura grabs her stuff from her duffel bag and heads into the bathroom, figuring that there’s no point in arguing. Normally she loves her naturally optimistic nature, but today Sakura fights to squash it back down – there’s no point getting her hopes up, just so Itachi can have the pleasure of waltzing over and crushing them beneath his feet like usual.

Blushing again at the memory of the, ah, encounter between herself and her squad leader earlier in the evening, Sakura climbs into the shower, and makes it a point to bite her lips as firmly as she can, as she turns the dial to the farthest side of the red, and pulls the rusty knob out—

As usual, the cascade of water is powerful and instantaneous, and despite herself, Sakura’s lungs expand in preparation for a scream, and then she blinks, and it registers…

Heat.

Hot water.

Warm, hot, steamy heat.

All of a sudden, Sakura’s warm like she hasn’t felt in a week, and practically melting under the blessed relief, and she turns her face up to the shower, letting the hot water wash over her chilled body.

Ecstasy. Paradise.

Hell, forget what she had said earlier – she may just love Uchiha Itachi for finally granting her this sweet, blessed mercy…

In all honesty, at that moment, Haruno Sakura wraps her arms around her dripping skin, dies, and goes to heaven.

…For all of ten seconds.

The abrupt switch to the icy water of the previous days is sudden enough to crush even the scream that would have come about in normal circumstances, and Sakura merely blinks, staring at the tiled walls as they swim before her eyes.

It takes a few moments for her body to realize the horrific injustice that it has just been dealt, and when it does, Sakura numbly tries her best to move out of the path of the cold, her teeth already chattering. It takes her mind another few moments to catch up, but when it does, Sakura’s right hand clenches into a fist.

The bastard had purposefully left her ten freakin’ seconds of hot water. Ten. Freaking. Seconds. Taunting her with the promise of pleasure, and then pulling back – playing hot and cold. Literally.

Sakura’s eyes narrow into thin, menacing slits of emerald green.

This can’t continue any longer, Itachi, she promises herself, grabbing the bottle of shampoo and squeezing it purposefully into her hand, while glaring in the direction of the nearby bedroom – where he is separated from her only by a thin sheet of glass and an even thinner wooden door. This means wear. Tomorrow night. You. Me. It’s going down.

-

Late The Next Night

-

Sakura counts exactly two minutes after Genma and Shino leave the room in their search for dinner, before allowing herself to let out a deep sigh and raking her fingers through her hair.

Already, things aren’t going as planned – Itachi had decided to shower before dinner, today, which means she’s apparently going to have to confront him after he uses up the entire tank of hot water, and just hope that he takes her seriously enough to remember the warning tomorrow night.

From behind the bathroom door, the shower continues, with a tiny amount of pent-up steam actually seeping under the crack at the bottom of the door. Sakura sighs longingly.

According to her calculations, she has approximately three and a half minutes before Itachi emerges from the shower, and another two and a half minutes required for him to dress fully. It takes three exactly, actually, but Sakura just wants to get into the bathroom and trap him there before he can make an escape – she just hopes that the half a minute she’s cutting into is just the time it takes him to pull his hair into a ponytail, and not anything…essential.

There are roughly forty-five minutes and twenty-two seconds before Shino and Genma return with the food, which gives her a very decent window of time to unleash her fury upon the inconsiderate-crazy-psycho-not-hot-at-all-but-hot-water-stealing Frigid Ice Bitch Itachi.

Still, the next six minutes are nothing short of agonizing. Sakura plucks at the loose fibers of her black t-shirt and matching pants nervously, keeping an eye on the clock, while listening intently to Itachi’s soft footsteps against the tiles of the bathroom floor.

Fifteen seconds remaining before the six-minute window is up. Sakura stares at the bathroom door, suddenly panicked and wondering how to approach this, before she decides that, in this situation at least, a headlong charge would be the most appropriate.

She takes a moment to look pleadingly up at the ceiling.

Any last regrets? Inner Sakura asks mischievously.

“Yeah,” Sakura mutters under her breath, steeling herself for the impending attack. “…I didn’t get a chance to write my last will and testament.”

-

Itachi is regarding himself impassively in the mirror as he runs a chakra-covered hand through his hair, drying it as it goes. Interesting, he muses to himself, before taking the nearest comb and beginning to comb his hair out. His teammates are oddly…quiet…tonight.

This train of thought goes flying out the window as soon as his pink-haired jounin medic barges into the bathroom, her eyes glinting in a determined fashion, even as she rapidly shuts and locks the door firmly behind her. As if this doesn’t make enough of a statement, Sakura throws her back against the door and braces herself, staring at him warily and apparently too shaken to speak.

Itachi raises an eyebrow and sets the comb down, somewhat intrigued at this new development. “If you are trying to imply that I will have to get through you in order to achieve my blessed freedom on the other end of the bathroom door – well, I am sure you know that I will have no difficulty doing that.”

The apparently suicidal kunoichi glares at him. “Don’t sass me, Uchiha!”

This time, Itachi blinks.

Sakura takes the opportunity to advance on him; despite the fact that she only comes up to the hollow of his throat, if that, she looks downright menacing. “You and I need to have words.”

Itachi crosses his arms with a smirk. “And you needed to lock me in a tiny bathroom in order to do that? Why, Sakura, I believe that I may have to report you to the Godaime for sexual harassment…”

Sakura pales drastically, apparently having been reduced to temporary incoherence by this statement. “What – why – no! You’re the one who’s harassing me by purposefully and cruelly withholding my rights and privileges to hot water access!”

“Ah,” Itachi replies, intentionally making his tone as sound as bored as humanly possible. “That’s what this is all about.”

At this, Sakura actually grows a few inches due to sheer indignation alone. “Of course that’s what this is all about, you…you…crazy person!”

Itachi’s left eyebrow raises another fraction of an inch. “Crazy person. You just called me a crazy person. And…you do realize this little exchange is likely violating several aspects of the traditional squad leader and teammate protocol, correct?”

Sakura glowers, placing her hands on her hips. “Of course I do. But this has nothing to do with protocol, Itachi – this is personal.”

“Hm,” Itachi considers this. “Are you absolutely certain you want to go there, Sakura?”

Now, it’s Sakura’s turn to blink, although she recovers quickly, hiding the moment of confusion underneath her usual confidence. “Yes,” she replies quickly.

To her surprise, Itachi turns his back on her, and crosses the bathroom in a few level steps. He slides the frosted glass door to the shower open easily, before stepping inside and raising an eyebrow at her again.

Sakura’s surprise has now transfigured itself into utter bemusement, and she stares at the elder Uchiha blankly. “What…”

“Come here, Sakura,” Itachi instructs impassively.

Despite her best efforts at courage, Sakura cringes against the bathroom door again, utterly horrified. “Say what?”

Some tiny, subconscious part of her is screaming that Itachi; hot, older, Itachi, has just ordered her to get into a very small and very secluded place with him, and that is certainly not the kind of order she wants to question. Still, this is all so very strange and unprecedented that Sakura just kind of twitches and wonders if it is too late to unlock the door and sprint screaming out of the inn until she crashes into Shino and Genma.

“Sakura.” Itachi’s voice is low and silky, reminding her that, even though this is ‘personal’ business, he is still, in effect, her commander. “Come. Here.”

Her traitorous footsteps carry her unwillingly to the very edge of the stall, where she stands and looks up at him, bewildered. He smirks again, evidently taking pleasure in her disquietude, before tilting his head slightly. “Inside.”

Swallowing conspicuously and willing her body to the earth, Sakura steps into the shower stall – interestingly enough, she had never before fully appreciated just how tiny it was. Or, just how intimidating Itachi could be.

“Slide the door shut, please,” he asks liltingly, while leaning against the tiled wall and looking rather relaxed.

Sakura balks outright at this. “But—“

Itachi cracks one eye open and narrows it at her.

Fearing for her life, Sakura slides the frosted glass door shut, while frantically trying to remember if Tsunade-shishou had ever given her any instructions on how to fight off irritatingly sexy team leaders while secluded in a shower stall with them.

…Nope. Nothing. Nothing at all. As a matter of fact, Sakura thinks that if she had ever even asked Tsunade-shishou this, the Godaime would just have winked and told her to take advantage of such a delicious situation.

Which would totally have worked, if her irritatingly sexy team leader had been Genma or somebody! With Itachi, though, Sakura just shrinks somewhat against the now-closed frosted glass door and stares at him, much as a frightened rabbit would do to its prey.

Itachi clears his throat at last, before taking a step forward. Sakura tenses instinctively, but he turns to the faucet, not her, before placing his right hand lightly on the rusted metal. Despite her instinct to cut her losses and run, curiosity takes over, and she peers over his shoulder.

Itachi closes his eyes for a moment, before exhaling sharply – and right before Sakura’s amazed eyes, the rusted metal of the faucet glows red and begins to emit steam, as Itachi pulls his hand away, looking satisfied.

“Oh, my Buddha,” Sakura breathes, astonished, while remembering what Mikoto had done to clear up the snow and ice in her kitchen the last time they had visited. “No way—that would require an insane amount of chakra control—“

Itachi smirks. “A slight modification to the Ryuuka that Mother taught me.”

“So…” Comprehension begins to dawn in her eyes. “You…”

“Heated up the entire remaining supply of the water tank, yes,” Itachi acknowledges. “Everybody in this inn will be receiving free hot showers for the rest of the night, whether they want one or not.”

Sakura actually gapes. “You – you could have done this the entire time?”

Itachi nods impassively. “Yes.”

Now completely outraged, Sakura fights the urge to kick him in the shin – or, better yet, punch him into the next room. “Then why didn’t you?”

“In all honesty,” Itachi begins, surveying her through veiled eyelashes, “I enjoyed observing your reactions.”

Sakura’s jaw drops. “…You did not just go there.”

“You went there first,” Itachi counters. “I just followed.”

Sakura shakes her head, trying to make sense of this. “So, you’ve been toying with my emotions and putting me in physical agony for the past week just for the hell of it?”

Itachi smirks at her again. “Fundamentally, yes.”

There is only one thing she can do in response to such a blatant admission of physically and psychologically torturing her, and, as she would have to pay for damages sustained to the inn out of her own pocket if she punched Itachi through the next wall—

In one swift movement, Sakura reaches forward and pulls out the shower knob, mind intent on revenge.

In the next second, scalding hot water courses down on both of them, and, taking a page out of Tsunade-shisou’s book, Sakura’s arm shoots out before either of them can blink, and she twists Itachi underneath the full flow of the hot water, even though it is drenching them both to the skin. “Take that, Ice Bitch,” she snarls.

Itachi spares exactly one moment to smirk at her, before, in one deft movement, grabbing the neck of her t-shirt with his free hand. The next thing Sakura knows, her back is pressed up against the already-steamy tiles, his hands pinning her wrists by the side of her head, hard—

“Tell me, Sakura,” Itachi breathes, bending down slightly, to look her in the eye. “Is that a phrase my brother taught you?”

The look in his eyes is very reminiscent of a predator having cornered its prey, and Sakura tries to outright force her breathing to calm, even though he is only a hairsbreadth away from her. She struggles in vain, but his thumbs stroke slow circles against the flushed, vulnerable skin of her inner wrists, and Sakura can’t help but stifle her gasp. “Yes. It is.”

Itachi considers this for a brief moment, managing to look utterly cool and composed even while standing under a hot shower, with water dripping off his long hair and soaking his black t-shirt to his skin. It just isn’t fair that he can manage to look perfectly hot – no pun intended – under the circumstances, while Sakura just feels like a drowned rat about to be ingested by a hawk…but the look in his eyes tells her something different, and the kunoichi swallows.

Itachi’s nose is almost brushing hers, now. “After seven years of friendship, I am sure you know that my younger brother can be rather…foolish…at times,” he murmurs softly. He leans in, a little closer, so that the wet, silky strands of his raven hair mingle with hers. “As a result, I believe you may have received an incorrect impression of me.”

“Perhaps,” Sakura squeaks, all too aware of their closeness, and his voice sliding over her heat-sensitized skin, and the press of the steam against her wet clothes…

Itachi moves his lips to brush against hers, teasingly, for a fraction of a second, before pulling back. “Would you be interested in rectifying the impression in question?”

Sakura visibly bites her lower lip in thought, and Itachi’s eyes darken to a deep shade of crimson, his grip on her wrists relaxing momentarily. That is all she needs, though, and in the next moment, it is Itachi who is pressed against the frosted glass door, with her fingers tangled firmly in his hair.

-

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Itachi purrs a few minutes later, his grip tightening around her hips, as they ease themselves back into the path of the hot water.

Sakura smiles up at him wickedly, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “As you should.”

-

A Very, Very Long Time Later

-

Having demolished their respective servings of sesame chicken, Shino and Genma sit and stare at the closed bathroom door, while silently marveling at the amount of steam that is seeping through the small crack at the bottom of the door.

“Damn,” Genma says at last. “You’d think he would have run out by now. Shino – do you think he’s drowning himself? Should we go in and, you know…check?”

Shino thinks about this for a moment. “That would be a good idea, if…”

“If?” Genma prompts.

“If Sakura wasn’t missing, as well.”

Genma smirks. “You’ve got a point there, old friend. You definitely have a point.”

-

For appearance’s sake, Sakura emerges from the bathroom first, luckily finding that Shino and Genma are very considerately feigning sleep. Tossing an affectionate smile at their backs, she quickly changes into her sleeping clothes, before slipping under the covers. For the first night of the entire mission, she feels thoroughly, pleasantly…warm.

…Which, of course, has everything do with the hot shower, and absolutely nothing to do with the guy she had shared it with.

Inner Sakura claws herself upright from where she had collapsed in a melty puddle of goo, only to kick Sakura’s actual conscious mind in the jugular and order her to stop lying to herself.

Sakura snuggles deeper into the pillow, fighting the smile that threatens to spread across her face, since the chakra-dried Itachi has just slipped into the room, and she really doesn’t need to give him another reason to smirk at her in that deliciously infuriating way. She closes her eyes, the long day – and the past hour – beginning to take its toll on her.

Itachi’s footsteps are mostly silent, but suddenly, she feels the customary warm, soft weight of the navy blue fleece blanket land on her. Normally, he just drops it on her hips and leaves her to pull it around herself, but tonight, Itachi arranges it for her. Sakura feels, rather than sees, his brief moment of hesitation; then, her bed dips a few inches because of the added weight, and Itachi braces himself on his arm for a moment and presses a gentle kiss on her cheek, before quietly withdrawing to his place on the floor.

Sakura pulls the blankets closer around her, curling up on her side, and burying her face in the pillow; truly content. Despite herself, she smirks in a way rather reminiscent of Itachi himself – hell, she so cannot wait to tell Sasuke and Naruto…

Perhaps, Sakura muses, as she finally falls asleep, lulled by the sound of Itachi’s deep, even breathing, this is going to be a good winter, after all.

-

the end

and an epilogue of sorts, because the story wouldn’t really be complete without one

-

…And, of course, they lived happily ever after. Sasuke and Naruto survived their minor heart attacks and went on to live equally joyful and fulfilling lives, although their respective romances, to their secret disappointment, had nowhere near as hot (no pun intended) of a catalyzing factor.

When the time came, Sakura was thrilled to discover that the Uchiha compound had a neverending supply of hot water, although there were still times when she and her husband would mysteriously and inexplicably disappear into their bathroom for hours at a time.

But that is most definitely a story for another time and place.

(Albeit one that a certain Uchiha Sasuke most definitely does not want to hear, thankyouverymuch.)

-

the end, for realz this time. :)

Haha, that was fun. Again, thank you so much to everybody who reviewed the previous chapter – and, of course, more feedback is very much appreciated. :)