life is what happens

Summary: Sakura aimed for her best friend, slipped and slugged a stranger in the face with her bag. That was how it started – with a bag of tomatoes. OneShot- Sakura, Sasuke and Naruto and the thing that happens while you're busy making other plans.

Warning: AU. And slight language. If everything college-related seems strange to you then that might be because I based the story on European university standards.

Set: story-unrelated.

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

A/N: Oh God, I did it. I wrote a Naruto-AU-college-fic. Shoot me! :) Either way, Merry Christmas to you all! (2013)

It was Sakura's second semester of college and it already promised to be interesting.

"And then Hinata stepped up and everyone was like, Woah, what's she doing, she's gonna get killed, and you could practically see the guys taking a step back when she stabs a finger at Neji and tells him to stop in her really calm voice and what do you think, he took a look and backed down! Can you believe it?"

Sakura had the uncanny ability to let loose whole strings of sentences without needing to breathe. As it was, she knew of the fact and was rather proud of it. She also knew the most likely reaction to her outburst so when she caught the queer, well-known glance her best friend fixed on her, she laughed. Sometimes she didn't know what was better: annoying him by accident or on purpose.

"I think he's completely besotted with her."

Sakura's suspicions had been cemented the evening before, when they had met, as they had somehow started to do on a regular basis, for dinner at Shikamaru's place. The apartment Shikamaru, Chouji and Neji shared was surprisingly neat. Sakura wasn't sure whether that was because Neji was a stickler for the rules or because Ino checked on her childhood friends often enough to bully them into cleaning up and doing housework. It probably was part of both.

Sakura liked their home.

It was a small apartment, the three bedrooms clustered around a dark corridor without windows, one bathroom and a kitchen. But they had a large living-room fitted with a battered, old sofa and two armchairs, a large TV (Chouji: "I don't watch TV much but when I do I want to do it with style") and a few bookshelves stuffed mostly with Shikamaru's chemistry books and one or two of Chouji's crime novels. Sakura had visited the three friends only few times and yet she already felt at home there. Perhaps it was because Ino seemed, although she lived somewhere else, such an integral part of the place. She resided over the kitchen like a queen, ordering around a sighing Shikamaru and a grinning Chouji, or sat in a corner of the couch, her legs folded under her, and laughed at one thing or another, asked questions and listened. From the day Sakura had stood in the cafeteria of the university for the first time, probably looking as lost as she felt, and Ino had called out to her ("Yo, you with the pink hair!"), they'd been friends. Growing up with Sasuke, mostly, Sakura never had realized how good it was to have a female friend. Now she had three.

The day before, Ino had greeted Sakura at the door, smiling brightly and waving her inside. "Chouji and Kiba are on kitchen duty. Go have a laugh at Kiba. He can't walk because he pulled something yesterday during a two-hour train ride. Serves him right, how dare he go on a trip without inviting us."

Sakura grinned. "Hi, Ino."

Chouji's head poked out of the kitchen door. "Ino, where is the bottle-opener? Oh, hi, Sakura."

Ino rolled her eyes. "It's your damn place."

Following her friend into the kitchen, Sakura greeted Chouji and Kiba. Kiba was sitting at the table, cutting some peppers, and glanced up at her grinning. He didn't seem in pain – until he attempted to stand in order to add the cut peppers to the great pot stewing on the oven. His face scrunched up.

"Dammit."

Sakura laughed, half compassionately; half because he looked so funny. "Worse than the last time?"

Kiba was notorious for his strange injuries. The last time, he had twisted his back and couldn't even remember how it had happened; it had resulted in groans and painful grimaces for one week. Now, he pulled a pained face. "Different." Then, his expression brightened again. "But at least I can stand." He proceeded to hobble to the stove, where Chouji was busy with a bottle of wine and the bottle opener Ino had localized.

"Where's Shikamaru, that lazy ass?" Ino asked.

Chouji shrugged. "Probably in his room. He wanted to read a paper first. Something about magnetics?"

"Kinetics." Ino sighed. "I'll get him." And she disappeared into the corridor. Sakura listened with one ear as Kiba told Chouji of the newest puppies in his sister's litter. Hana Inuzuka was a successful dog breeder, taking over the family business despite her relative youth. Sakura had seen a few of the puppies and was determined to adopt one – as soon as she had her own place and enough time to care for a dog. In forty years, probably.

"Shikamaru!" She heard Ino's impatient voice from across the corridor, followed by a male voice.

"Ino, dammit, when will you ever learn to knock?"

"When you learn to close a door, idiot!" Said door slammed again. Sakura slipped out of the warm kitchen and found Ino in the dark corridor, her forehead leaning against the now-closed door.

"Ino?" Sakura asked softly, only guessing what had happened. "Are you okay?"

Her friend's face was flushed. Sakura could see it even in the dim light that filtered through the half-open door of Chouji's room. Closing her eyes, Ino took a deep breath before turning around to Sakura. The usual smile was back in place again. "He's getting ready," she said, smoothing down her skirt that needed no smoothing. "Let's go, join the others."

("Who needs men as long as there is food that can be topped with cheese?")

In the warm and brightly-lit living-room Tenten and Hinata already were perched on the sofa, engrossed in a conversation with Shino and Neji. The latter, Sakura noticed, was turned particularly towards one woman – and it wasn't Tenten. Swallowing her smile, she dropped onto the sofa next to the Chinese girl. Hinata and Neji never had been close. Actually, in their first semester Neji had ignored Hinata completely. Only when she had almost been expelled from the university because she had stood up for what she believed, he had realized her true strength. Sakura couldn't blame him: on the first glance Hinata almost seemed invisible.

"Hey, guys."

Hinata smiled at her shyly. Neji nodded and Shino greeted her back. "Sakura," Tenten said, frowning at her exaggeratedly, a twinkle in her eyes. "Welcome back. How was Spain? Many hot guys?"

"It was fun," she answered, blushing. "The additional experience was probably balanced the fact that I didn't talk to any person there except for my boss and the patients who understood English."

"You went to Spain and didn't learn Spanish?" Shikamaru had entered the room noiselessly, his eyes flitting over the people present disinterestedly. When she first had met him Sakura had thought Shikamaru was a perfect bore. (Why do you like him at all? But there were things she just couldn't ask and Ino wouldn't have answered, anyway.) It had taken her some time to realize behind the uncaring mask, though, was a brain that cataloged your every move. Sakura couldn't decide what was worse: if Shikamaru simply never noticed the way Ino looked at him, or if he had noticed and simply didn't care for it. "What did you do over there, anyway, except for working at the hospital?"

Uncomfortably, she shrugged. She couldn't well tell her friends that she had spent most of her day at work and the evenings in her small room, all by herself. She was glad she was back now: there was nothing worse than knowing what one had and not being able to have it. Friends, for example, and the fun that went with them. Even if what they had was a different kind of fun the average college student enjoyed: Sakura had been living in town for almost a year now and she still hadn't even seen one club from the inside. The doorbell saved her from further embarrassment. A few minutes later Sasuke entered the living-room and Shikamaru's attention was thankfully diverted.

There was nothing typical in this group.

First, there were Neji and Hinata, both Hyuuga but not siblings. Hinata was small and shy but when it came to her subject – business and economics – she was the best tutor that could possibly exist, having grown up with the subject in her family's company. Tenten and Neji were studying law along with Sasuke, though they had started a year earlier and thus were two semesters ahead of him. One did not want to mess with Tenten – she had a brown belt in Karate. Kiba, on the other hand, was a physicist. With him one had to watch out for nerdy comments, scientific-complex and idiotically stupid jokes. He also enjoyed a certain nonsense-rivalry with Shikamaru and Ino, who both were studying chemistry. Chouji was the engineer of the group, always the one to be called when it came to repairs in and around their places and occasionally on computer hard- and software, too. Shino was a biologist, one as untypical as there could be. And Lee, finally, currently stood at the practical year of his training of physical therapy at the local technical college. A close friend of Neji and Tenten, he was even crazier than Kiba and Ino combined. In Sakura's world, that meant something. Sakura herself was studying medicine in her second semester. She had been incredibly lucky to be placed in the same town as Sasuke. But then, Sasuke had applied to almost every university in the country, just planning to get away from his parents, who never had gotten over the loss of their elder son who had died in a car accident, as soon as possible.

"I think," Sasuke now said in answer, slowly and emphasized, "Neji has no balls if he lets a woman tell him what to do."

Sakura continued walking but fixed him with a lethal stare, the one he expected of her. "Says who?"

"Says me."

"Because you'd never back down from a fight when a girl tells you so."

"No."

"Because you're a man."

"Yes."

"Chauvinist pig."

"Feministic bitch."

"Don't call me that!" Sakura whirled around, now seriously annoyed, and aimed for his side with her bag. She'd left most of her books in her locker because her mother had asked her to run an errand before coming home but the groceries still had a sizable weight. The bag swung around heavily (leverage theory), missed Sasuke who had taken a quick step to the side, continued on its trajectory (objects in motion) and slugged a stranger right in the face (Newton's Second Law).

Three cheers for Physics.

(To tell the truth, he had been kneeling on the sidewalk fixing his shoelace. That was why his face had the perfect height to be targeted by Sakura's bag.)

"Oh my God!" Appalled, Sakura dropped her weapon and rushed over to the person she had just incapacitated. "I am so sorry! Are you alright?"

A groan told her that some things definitely weren't alright. "Sasuke!" She hissed. "Get over here! We might need First Aid-"

"I am so not going to do the reanimation," Sasuke mumbled, but quiet enough only Sakura could hear. "Though, on second glance…"

Sakura shot him an irritated look. "Sasuke-"

"Outch," the stranger said, holding his face with both his hands. "Ouat ouaas saat?"

"Excuse me?" Sakura shied back. "Do you speak English?"

"You hit him straight in the face, stupid," Sasuke said and pushed past her. "You can't understand him when he's covering his nose like that. Move, will you? Nobody wants to be treated by a medical student."

"Always nice to have your vote of confidence," she replied sarcastically but did step aside. While Sakura was a medical student, she had only been one for one semester. Sasuke, on the other hand, had gathered experiences in first aid in his family's dojo since he could remember. Since she could remember, too.

(Itachi had taught them. But Itachi was a no-go subject now.)

"Can you see?" Sasuke asked the man and peered through the hands clasped over his face. "Do you see me?"

The reply was a colorful curse. Sasuke nodded, approving. "You should be fine."

The man took down his hands and regarded first Sasuke, then Sakura with watery eyes. His nose was bleeding and his lip was torn, but other than that, he seemed fine.

"What the fuck do you have in that bag?" He demanded to know, his expression oscillating between anger and amusement. "And do you always go around hitting other people in the face with it?"

Sakura glanced down at the contents of her bag, now strewn all over the asphalt. The vegetables did look a bit worse for the wear. "Apples," she said. "And tomatoes."

"One hell of tomatoes," the man answered, regarding his hand. "I don't want to know who you're planning to kill with those. Damn." There was blood on his hands and a droplet ran down from his nose. Sasuke handed him a paper tissue which he gratefully accepted.

"It probably wasn't so much the tomatoes but their packaging," Sakura defended herself. "They have sharp edges, you know. I've always said vegetables shouldn't be packed in that much plastic but…" Her voice trailed off as she stared on said pieces on the ground. "Never mind."

"Well, I guess it could have been worse," the man said laconically. "You could just have bought coconuts."

Sasuke snorted.

Suspicious, Sakura glanced at him and saw he was grinning. Which, with Sasuke, meant the corners of his lips were actually twitching. The man was as tall as Sasuke, which made him about one and a half heads taller than Sakura. His hair was an unruly mane of gold – bed head didn't describe it exactly, because she suspected even the worst hair looked tamer coming straight from the bed – and his eyes were so intensely blue Sakura wondered whether he was wearing contacts. He wasn't exactly handsome – his face carried too much expression for that, mischievousness and humor at the same time – but his features were even and pronounced. There had been a time – when she'd been much younger – during which Sakura had been helplessly in love with Sasuke. He had dark hair and brown, deep eyes, everything she'd ever dreamed of – but he also had an important disadvantage: he was gay. Still, every potential boyfriend Sakura had had either had dark eyes or dark hair. Now, for the first time, she thought that fair-haired men could be good-looking, and that this one was a fine example of his kind. He seemed approximately the same age as they were.

"I am very sorry," Sakura apologized one last time. "I didn't look."

"I'll survive," the blond said, his eyes twinkling. The last bits of anger seemed to have left him without any trace. "I've had worse. Once, my adoptive mother hurled a lobster at me."

"I hope she missed you," Sasuke said in his usual dry tone.

"Oh, she was aiming for my adoptive father anyway. They were having an argument over who would have to cook. I think my father wrote a book based on the evening events. The Lobster Incident, or something." He grinned lazily. Sakura debated whether to ask or not. She probably didn't want to know-

"Never heard of it." Sasuke crouched to help Sakura collect her groceries. The man bent down as well and reached for an escaped onion.

"You wouldn't. He's only famous in certain circles. Jiraiya Kasuga. By the way, I'm Naruto Uzumaki."

"Sasuke Uchiha," Sasuke introduced himself with his typical curtness. "And this is Sakura Haruno."

The blond – Naruto – smiled at Sakura but she was too busy gaping at him, a forgotten onion escaping from her bag again. "Your adoptive father is Jiraiya Kasuga? The husband of Tsunade Senju?"

"Last time I checked those were their names," he said, bemused. "Don't tell me you know his books? Because he usually writes something that comes pretty close to porn-"

Sakura didn't hear him. "So it is true! Senju-San will be teaching at our university this semester? That's – that's amazing!" She turned to Sasuke, her eyes shining. "I told you about her! She set a record for transplantation of inner organs! And her studies in the field of natural poisons are unprecedented! I heard rumors that she would transfer here but nobody knew exactly…" She turned back to Naruto. "That's amazing! She is my greatest idol!"

When she saw his expression, she blushed to the roots of her hair.

Naruto glanced down at her sorrowfully. "I hope you won't be disappointed, then," he said with a sympathetic expression. "She can be a regular terror on days." The corners of his lips quirked upwards, and a fond expression appeared on his face. This person was genuinely fond of his adoptive parents, she realized, and he had no qualms whatsoever about talking of them. Not the typical adopted, troubled kid, then? "But she's an excellent medic. Don't be fooled by her harsh outward appearance. I don't know how often she patched me up when I was a kid." He looked to the left and right, as if to check for listeners, and beckoned Sakura closer. "And don't tell her I told you," he whispered conspiratorially. "She a reputation to uphold, you know."

He laughed, a sound that was dark and honest. Sakura liked the sound. And his eyes really were incredibly blue. "I was looking forward to moving here. I guess it was the right decision."

"Will you be studying here, too?" Sasuke asked. "What is your subject?"

"Business economics," Naruto answered. "Yours?"

"Law."

"Ah." The blond nodded in understanding. "We'll have a few lectures together, then. And I don't have to ask you, right?" He added, smirking at Sakura.

She blushed. "I'm not as clumsy as you might think right now."

"That's what she tells everyone," Sasuke mumbled, just barely audible, and she scowled at him. Naruto grinned bemusedly.

"You two argue like an old couple."

"We're only friends," Sakura hastened to assure him, then stopped short. Where had this come from? She could again feel her face heat up uncomfortably. Naruto frowned and glanced at Sasuke shortly but did not say anything else. "Were you on your way to the economics building?"

"No, actually, I was looking for the registration office. We only moved here yesterday and I missed the start of the semester. Good thing courses for business economics start in summer and winter."

"Over there." Sasuke pointed at a grey stone building to their right. "Can't miss it. Walk past the eye cancer-inducing thing that looks like junk but in reality is art."

"Hey," Sakura said, driven by an impulse she couldn't clearly explain. "Would you like to join us some evening next week? Some friends of ours and we're having dinner together." With a glance to Sasuke she made sure he approved of her idea. "It's really just us and a few friends," she added quickly. "We're not exactly party people."

"That sounds great," Naruto said with a grin. "You sure I'd be welcome?"

"Sure," Sakura said. An image of Ino flashed through her head – her friend critically challenging the newcomer on his political and sociological beliefs and his view on science and humanity – and decided Ino wouldn't be the only one to have fun. Naruto certainly seemed as if he could hold his ground against her friend. "Give me your number and I'll send you the place and time."

"That's one way to ask a guy for his number," Naruto said drily and rattled down the digits. Sakura blushed and busied herself with typing.

Sasuke checked his watch. "We have to get going."

"It was nice meeting you," Naruto said and clasped Sasuke's hand. To Sakura's surprise, her friend did not seem too miffed at their new acquaintance. He probably thought he looked hot.

Awkwardly, Sakura turned to him and wondered what to do now. "So… I guess I'll see you?" She asked lamely.

"I'd certainly like to," he answered, no trace of awkwardness in his voice. "It was nice meeting you too, tomato girl."

Sakura glared, embarrassed. "That's a stupid nickname."

"Why?" He looked mock-hurt. "You don't like tomatoes?"

"As a fact, I do," she said. "But…"

"I like tomatoes, too," Naruto answered. "Except, of course, when they are thrown at me. But I guess with my face one can't help but lob stuff at me."

This time, she smiled. She couldn't help herself: Naruto had an endearing way to mock himself – mock her, for that instance.

"You're an idiot."

"I take that as a compliment, since my mother calls my father idiot all the time."

"Must run in the family, then," Sasuke said. Naruto grinned so widely Sakura wondered whether his face would split into two parts any second now.

"Again, taken as a compliment. See you, tomato girl," Naruto waved over his shoulder and this time Sakura was hard-pressed to not grab the box of tomatoes and throw it after him. She only glared after him, stubbornly trying to ignore the butterflies in her stomach.

"You like him," Sasuke remarked.

"Shut up."

"He's straight, by the way."

"Shut. Up."

The semester promised to be interesting indeed.