Starting up a new collection of oneshots because random ideas come to me quite frequently. I will be continuing the tradition of Menagerie of taking prompts from reviewers so please feel free to leave suggestions in the review.


1. Aloof


He came back and she stretched out her hand. Quarters and pennies spilled into her palm along with a dollar bill slightly damp with sweat. Eyes closed, she rattled the coins around in her hand before she dropped them into her pocket. She pulled her hair away from the back of her neck. The warm breeze that brushed across her shoulders and back was a welcome relief. Inside her mouth tasted like a barren desert.

"A large lemonade costs $3.50. That's robbery," he snorted while pushing the cold plastic cup into her other hand. Cracking her eyes open, Sakura gave him a smile. He climbed onto the hood of the car too, pushing bangs out of his face in an irritated gesture. But his hair flopped back into his face as if to mock him. Snickering, Sakura reached over and pulled his bangs back, securing them in place with a bobby pin she pulled from her own hair.

"Very pretty," she declared before putting the straw in her mouth.

She burst out laughing when Itachi shoved her off the hood with his hip.


They met her freshman year. Her: bright-eyed and straight out of a high school in the suburbs. Him: a sophomore who had just quit smoking over the summer. They lived in the same building and ran into each other enough times during events to know each other's names and to be able to say 'hi' in passing. Her roommate, Ino, became good friends with Itachi's but Sakura always preferred to spend her nights studying or watching TV in a friend's room. Their paths hadn't crossed often and so they were content that way.

It wasn't until her sophomore year that Itachi and company started barging into her and Ino's room to hang out. They were still in the same dorm only they had moved up a floor. All of the guys had moved out to an apartment but that didn't stop them from always dropping by. At first, Sakura made it a point to be out of the room so as not to intrude. But then they persuaded her to stay to play blackjack. Sakura destroyed all of them the first round and that was the beginning of their friendship.

Kisame, the lazy old grandpa of the group, loved that they could swap cooking recipes. Hidan, the sharp-tongued, liked that she never batted an eye at his increasingly creative insults for her. ("Trashdonkey" was her personal favorite.) Nagato, perpetually stuck to the hip with his girlfriend, never really seemed to have an opinion of her but liked that she let him beat the hard bosses for her in video games. Deidara, big-hearted and always smiling, liked wasting time on the internet with her, giggling over stupid memes. And Itachi, well, it seemed like she and Itachi were on the same wavelength all the time.

If everyone wanted Chinese food, they would rebel and go off to get buffalo wings by themselves. On the weekends they didn't quite feel up to drinking with the rest of the guys, they escaped to go cafe-hopping until all the drunkards were safely asleep. He was her go-to bodyguard at parties to deter persistent creeps on the dance floor. And he never minded driving her home when she had had too much to drink to brave the campus bus late at night.

"I kind of wish I had a boyfriend," Sakura sighed one day over a bowl of popcorn. Hidan and Nagato, playing video games on the sofa, didn't respond. But Deidara grinned from his spot next to her. He finished chewing his mouthful of macaroni and cheese before he spoke.

"If that's a cry for help, none of us are offering assistance," he teased. Sakura lowered her foot in an axe kick on his right thigh.

"Be nice, Deidara," Itachi chastised. He sat across from them, seemingly busy on his laptop. But when Sakura looked over at him to thank him, Itachi was smirking too.

"Besides, it's not like anyone would date a potato like Sakura anyway," he added. Sakura grabbed a handful of popcorn to fling at his face.

"Dick," she sneered.

"Jackass," Itachi smoothly answered.

Sakura leaned back in her seat to survey him for a moment. Her eyes narrowed while Itachi went on happily picking up the pieces of popcorn scattered across the table.

"GetitgetitGETIT! SHOOT IT, HIDAN!" Nagato hollered in the background.

"I'M TRYING, YOU GARBAGE CAN!" yelled Hidan as his fingers frantically mashed buttons on the controller.

"We're like best friends... but enemies," Sakura suddenly remarked.

"Best frenemies," Itachi quickly corrected.

"Wait, what about me, yeah?" asked Deidara with the look of a kicked puppy.

"You're our slave," answered Itachi.

Sakura leaned across the table to bump her fist against his while Deidara looked like he was deciding whether to laugh or to punch them both.

By junior year, Sakura was engrossed completely in her studies. She and Ino moved into an apartment with two of their friends. Conveniently located in the same complex as Itachi's place, she found that living literally a minute apart made things a lot more fun. The guys frequently barged in to demand food or to do homework together. And when Ino's boyfriend stayed the weekend or when she fought with him and spent a few days sobbing and being generally bad-tempered, Sakura escaped to the guys' place.

Putting her feet up on the coffee table, Sakura stared down at the slice of steaming pizza in her hands.

"I love pizza," she declared completely seriously.

"Sakura, if you spent as much time thinking about boys as you did about pizza, maybe you'd have a boyfriend by now," Itachi remarked. There was a muffled "DAYUM" from Hidan and Nagato's shared room. Sakura casually slapped her hand against the thin wall behind her and listened to Hidan howl angrily as his house of cards tumbled.

"I swear to God. One day, I'm going to punch you in the face, Uchiha," Sakura answered without looking at him. He grabbed a couple slices of pizza and threw them on a paper plate before he plopped down on the sofa beside her. Pushing her arm out of the way, he put his feet in her lap, which she promptly shoved away with a disgusted look.

"You love me too much," he assured her too smugly. Sakura shoveled more pizza into her mouth to avoid agreeing with him.

Slowly, Sakura began to realize that the time she spent with Itachi was changing. She spent more time alone with him and less with the other guys. Very often, his texts asking her to hang out had an unvoiced 'but don't invite the others' to them. She found that she agreed with this idea though.

They went to movies, hung out at diners sipping coffee all night. If she texted him that she was cold in the library, sometimes he showed up with a coffee and a blanket and sat across from her doing work.

He called her.

No one ever called anymore. It was all texting and instant messaging. But even though he lived less than a minute away, sometimes he called her at night. And they fell asleep listening to each other's' slurring laughs and soft sighs.

One day, chilled to the bone from waiting at the bus stop, Sakura rushed into the guys' apartment. Shivering, she dropped her coat onto the back of a chair and then began digging through the cupboards like she lived there.

"Hey, Kisa?" she called, knowing at least Kisame wasn't in class.

"Yeah?" he yelled back from his room.

"You got any hot chocolate mix?" she inquired.

"Nah. Nagato drank the last of it yesterday. We've got coffee though."

It was only then that Sakura turned around and noticed the lump lying on the sofa. She saw the silver hair and arched an eyebrow.

"Hidan? Are you asleep?" she asked.

"No," he replied, face still smashed into the cushions.

Nose scrunching, Sakura walked over to touch his cheek. She saw his body tense from how cold her hands were.

"You sick? You feel kind of warm," she continued on.

"No," he said just as shortly as the last time.

"...Are you crying?" she finally ventured.

"No. I'm not fucking crying. Just shut up, Sakura," Hidan snarled, flinching away from her hand. Unfooled by the act, Sakura yanked his shoulder until he looked at her. His entire face was puffy and red. Wet patches on his cheeks told her everything.

"She told me I wasn't reading her signals. She said I didn't get her," Hidan suddenly admitted. Her face contorted with sympathy.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he added before bursting into hard, ugly tears. Sighing heavily, Sakura sat down on the sofa beside him. He crawled over, depositing his face directly into her lap. And then he wrapped his arms around her as he sobbed and sobbed hard enough to make his whole body shake.

Itachi came home about an hour later. As he pushed the door open, he looked up directly at Sakura. For a moment, his stunned gaze lingered on Hidan. When Itachi was looking at her again, Sakura silently patted her heart to let him know what had happened. Itachi nodded to say that he understood before walking off to his room. Sakura was left wondering how long she could tolerate Hidan's weight splayed out across her thighs before she began to lose circulation. But then Itachi was back a few minutes later with his laptop. Not saying anything, he sat on the floor by her feet and leaned against the sofa. As he pulled up a word document and began working on his essay, Sakura reached out to muss his still-cold hair.


Just before finals were about to begin, Sakura found herself sitting in the living room peeling clementines. The fragrance of citrus permeated the warm room. On the other end of the sofa sat Itachi playing games on his phone. She could tell that he was winning from the smug look on his face as he swiped his finger.

"The guys say they want to go to Florida over break. What do you think?" she queried.

"I don't know. What happened to us driving to Quebec?" he reminded her. They had made plans months ago, though no concrete date had been set for the trip.

"It would be fun to go with everyone else. I don't know if they'd be okay with Quebec. What would they do? Eat snow?" answered Sakura. None of the others appreciated the snow after two consecutive blizzards. Deidara moaned daily about beaches and Sakura had even caught Kisame browsing through pictures of surfboards on his computer.

"We could go. Just the two of us," Itachi suggested, not looking up from his phone. Sakura stuck a slice of clementine into her mouth and chewed as she thought.

"What? And dump everyone else? That's cold, even for you," she laughed. As she spoke, she crawled over. He glanced up when he felt the sofa cushions shifting. She leaned in to pop a morsel of fruit into his mouth too. His expression grew thoughtful as he ate. Sakura sat back down on her end of the sofa to pull another wedge of clementine free.

"Are we dating?" he abruptly questioned.

"I don't think so," she answered just as calmly.

"Do you wanna?"

Sakura peered up at him. He flinched as looking away cost him his life in the game but then refocused on her.

"What. Date? Like for real?" she probed. He nodded once.

Chewing noisily on her clementine, Sakura considered this for a moment. Or, she pretended to be. She already knew her answer.

"You could have worded that a little more romantically but yeah. Okay," she finally told him after a few minutes.

"Please. You would punch me if I did something sappy like buy you roses," retorted Itachi. There was a pause. Then Sakura flung her clementine peels at him.

"True. I'm allergic anyway," she declared with a grin.