A/N: This is a repost of the chapter 10 one-shot from my Naruto one-shot story collection "Really." It seems people were having trouble finding it on here because it wasn't posted individually like it is on my ao3 account (same username as here), so I'm reposting it.
"Itachi has a spare room," Sasuke said when she picked up, "you can stay with him."
"What," Sakura blinked in confusion, "wait, doesn't he have roommates? Are you sure?"
"One of them unexpectedly backed out of the lease. It's in your budget and close to public transportation. I already asked him and he said it's ok, you can stay with him."
Something was niggling at Sakura, some fact Sasuke had mentioned in passing ages ago that had only just now become relevant.
"But aren't," she paused as she worked through her thoughts, "aren't all of his roommates guys?"
"Itachi will be there," said as if Sasuke's brother would swoop in and rescue her at any moment should she feel uncomfortable.
Most of the time Sakura found Sasuke's unshakeable belief in his brother's celestial perfection kind of cute. It wasn't quite so funny when her comfort was potentially on the line.
"Are you sure?"
"Did you want to stay in a hotel until you can find somewhere else to live?"
"Well, no, not really—"
"Good," Sasuke cut her off. "I'll text you the address."
And then he'd hung up and Sakura was left staring down at her phone as the disconnect tone sounded. No, she didn't really want to stay at a hotel while she tried to find a place. She was nervous enough using her data to look up accommodations and frantically answer Craigslist ads as the train brought her inevitably closer to her destination, worried she wouldn't have enough data left over to navigate the city until her plan refreshed itself at the end of the month. That didn't mean she didn't want options.
Her phone vibrated in her hand with a text from Sasuke. He'd sent her the address as promised, complete with instructions on how to get there from the station he'd obviously painstakingly typed out to be as idiot-friendly as possible. He'd also included Itachi's number, though Sakura still had it from years ago when Itachi sometimes took her and Naruto home from Sasuke's house.
Her phone buzzed again. It was a group text this time. Itachi would be home when she got there to let her in. If she wanted to stay for a few days while she found somewhere else to live she could do that. They didn't have anyone else lined up and it would take at least a week to find someone to fill the room.
A week to find a place to live and she didn't have to pay exorbitant hotel fees. Sakura typed out a polite thank you and turned the screen off, clutching the device with one hand as she watched the scenery roll past the window.
Two hours and seventeen minutes later found Sakura dragging her suitcase, duffel bag balanced on top, up several steps and onto the porch of a brightly colored house. She hovered for several minutes at the door, wanting to ring a doorbell that apparently didn't exist. Finally she reached for her phone and sent a quick text, waiting with baited breath for what felt like a lot longer than the fifty seconds it took for the door to open.
Itachi had not gotten any less handsome since the last time she'd seen him. In fact, his tousled hair and crinkled button-down, several of the top buttons carelessly undone, made him look really cute. Not for the first time Sakura cursed Mikoto and Fugaku Uchiha for having such good genes.
"Sakura," he smiled a shade nervously. "Good, I was worried I'd miss you. I just got home myself."
"Oh, um," Sakura didn't know what to say to that. "Did Sasuke make you come home early for me? It's not that big a deal I could've waited at the station for a couple of hours."
"Sakura," his expression deepened into a frown. Sakura resisted the urge to gulp nervously and start apologizing simultaneously. "I was not going to make you wait at the train station for another three hours."
He paused to run a hand back through his hair in a gesture she'd seen Sasuke make a thousand times.
"I'm sorry, where are my manners? Please, come in. Can I help you with your bags?"
Sakura cast a critical eye at the space behind him. To his right a door lay open. Directly behind him was a set of stairs leading upwards.
"That depends. Are we going upstairs, or…?"
"Oh, no. There's another apartment upstairs, it's through here."
"In that case I should be fine." Sakura grabbed for her suitcase handle and turned to find Itachi looking disapproving again. Sighing, she picked up her duffel bag and slung it over one shoulder before giving him an apologetic look.
"On second thought, if you wouldn't mind?"
"Of course not. If you go straight down the hallway it's the first door on the left."
Sakura nodded and scooted aside so he could pass on the way to her suitcase. She paused on the threshold to watch him and had to muffle a snort of laughter when his eyebrows arched into his hairline at the weight of her suitcase. Rather than be caught staring, Sakura quickly stepped into the apartment and followed his directions to the first door on the left.
It was covered with a purple curtain.
"So when you said 'door'…?"
"I apologize," there was the hint of a grunt in his voice. Sakura didn't turn her head for fear that she'd either laugh at him or get waylaid at the sight of his straining muscles. Grandmother Tsunade was right. It was useful to be strong, but it was fun to make men do things for you.
"There isn't actually a door," Itachi continued, and she heard the sound of wheels rolling over the hardwood. "I don't know why. We can get you some sort of screen if you decide to stay."
Curiously, Sakura brushed aside the hanging fabric and gaped at the room beyond. It was almost as big as her room at home and it was furnished. Granted, there was only a bed frame and a dresser, but it was bigger and more than she'd been expecting considering some of the options she'd seen on Craigslist.
An open doorway at the other end of the room led to a walk-in closet big enough for an actual window. And, ok, so the view was the twenty feet separating her room from the house next door, but it was still a window. Sakura resisted the urge to squeal right there. A walk-in closet! Ino would freak.
Unable to resist smiling she shrugged off her duffel bag, letting it drop to the floor with a loud thud before setting her backpack down more gently. Then she walked over to where Itachi stood just outside the room and easily lifted her suitcase over the doorstop, completely missing the astonished look on his face from her casual handling of the heavy bag.
"This is actually really nice. Should I be suspicious?"
"Your room is right next to the bathroom and Kisame likes singing in the shower," his lips quirked into a smile. "But, no, unless you dislike having to do your laundry in the kitchen."
In a house full of men, Sakura's mind filled in for her.
"No, I mean, are there any pest problems?" She started ticking off points on her fingers. "Maybe the hot water heater's tiny, or the insulation's really bad so utilities are expensive in the winter, or you have ghosts, or the people upstairs and/or next door are hippies in a commune who hold really loud parties and play anarchist anti-establishment punk rock.
"Or," Sakura was starting to build up steam now, having had nothing but Craigslist nightmares haunting her dreams for the past two months, "maybe one of you leaves unfinished glasses of milk laying around until they start to turn sour. Maybe—"
It took her a moment to realize Itachi was laughing. Hands on his knees, gasping breathlessly laughing. Sakura wanted to carve a hole into his laughter and crawl into it and purr like a big cat. Her entire face felt red. She was going to go up in smoke if he didn't stop. God damn Uchiha and their entire genetically pretty line.
"You've been spending too much time on Craigslist," Itachi smiled, wiping one corner of his eye. "There are nice places to live, but it's hard to find them when you're outside the city. Besides, you haven't seen the rest of the apartment or met Deidara and Kisame yet. I know Sasuke said you were nervous about living with three men."
Before he could continue with this suddenly big-brotherly manner—to Sakura's internal relief since the last thing she wanted was a hot guy treating her like an adorable little sister—there was the sound of a slamming door and an angry shout.
"God damn brats! I hate kids, yeah!"
Itachi checked his watch, as if the voice and the sound of loud stomping footsteps wasn't enough for him to confirm the identity of his roommate.
"And that will be Deidara." He leaned further out into the hallway and raised his voice. "Deidara, we have a guest."
"What, yeah?" There was the sound of angry muttering, and Sakura took a step out of her maybe-room, Itachi shuffling aside to give her space.
Her first thought was: Oh, god, he's hot too! Followed immediately by: I can't live here Ino's gonna invite herself over all the time and I'll never be able to get any work done. And then: Am I going to get any work done when my roommates are hot?
"This is Sakura," Itachi was saying when she snapped out of it. "My brother's friend. I sent you a text about her staying here until she decides on a place to live."
"What," Deidara repeated, pulling out a phone from his pocket. With his other hand he patted her on the head like a kid. "Ok, yeah," he nodded as he scrolled. "Brother's friend. Staying with us, fine, whatever."
Then he walked away. Sakura and Itachi both watched as he opened the door at the end of the hall, went in, and shut it behind him. Sakura thought her eyebrows had become one with her hairline as she stared at Itachi, but Itachi didn't even twitch, just kept staring at the door Deidara had vanished behind.
Suddenly the door opened and Deidara came scrambling out, skidding across the hallway between them.
"God damn it, Itachi, you can't just invite a kid to stay with us, even if she is some sort of prodigy genius going to college! 'No Brats' is a house rule, yeah!"
"Wait," Sakura spoke up for the first time, "how old do you think I am?"
Deidara paused from where he was leaning into Itachi's personal space.
"Like fifteen, yeah."
Sakura closed her eyes and counted backwards from twenty, which was two years older than her actual age. Hot Guy Number One was treating her like a little sister, and Hot Guy Number Two thought she was barely out of puberty, even if he did think that meant she was super smart to be starting college so young. With her luck the last roommate was probably going to be equally hot and as equally uninterested.
In the silence she heard Itachi speak, as if to a very slow person. "Deidara, my brother is eighteen. This is his childhood friend Sakura. She is the same age as Sasuke."
"Well you didn't say! How was I supposed to know, yeah." Deidara sounded flustered. "And she's not very developed—"
Sakura's eyes snapped open and she caught Deidara blushing fiercely, his entire face a bright red as he tugged nervously on his hair.
"I swear he's not usually this much of an asshole," Itachi said calmly.
"I'm sorry, yeah. God, ok, can we start over? I'm Deidara." He shot Itachi a glare. "And sometimes I'm an asshole because my idiot roommate sends me cryptic texts." He offered her a hand.
"Right," Sakura took his hand and shook it mechanically. "I'm Sakura, and I'm legal. I also won a gold medal at the Junior Olympics for karate when I was in high school," she gave his hand a hard squeeze and smiled with just her teeth, "so you should probably keep comments about my 'development' to yourself."
When she let go Deidara looked a little pale. Itachi looked like he was completely re-evaluating his worldview of her.
"I deserved that, yeah."
Ignoring him, and also the fact that his repentant face kind of made her want to scratch him under the ears like a puppy, Sakura turned to Itachi.
"You didn't know? I qualified three times, but only medaled once."
"Contrary to popular belief," one corner of his mouth curled, "Sasuke doesn't tell me everything. And I don't always pay as much attention to what my mother tells me as I should." Now he looked sheepish. "I suppose it makes sense considering who your grandmother is."
"Yeah, but my grandpa is the guy who writes the Make Out series, so I think it all balances out."
"Wait," Deidara interrupted. "Your grandfather writes the Make Out series?"
The look he sent her was a little too assessing for Sakura's tastes. First he thought she was fifteen, now he probably thought she was a raging nymphomaniac. Why was this her life.
"Technically, and thankfully, he's my step-grandpa, so I don't actually share any blood with him."
Sakura shook her head and sighed at the current topic of conversation.
"Can I see the rest of the apartment now?"
"I'm sorry," Itachi quickly apologized.
He gave Deidara an arch look, but the blonde appeared to be elsewhere at the moment, so Itachi put one hand on his shoulder and physically moved him out of the way.
"This is the bathroom," he gestured to the door on the left immediately after hers, nodding for her to go in when Sakura paused.
It was surprisingly clean, for a bathroom shared by three men. All men! her mind reminded her. Someone, and she strongly suspected Itachi as the likely culprit, had put the toilet lid down. Someone else had left a blow dryer and an electric shaver still plugged in and resting on the counter next to the sink, in a clear fire safety violation. Her money was not on Itachi this time. There was a little shelving unit cluttered with bathing supplies, a few ratty hand towels, extra toilet paper, and other bathroom paraphernalia against the wall.
Sakura really wanted to open all the drawers and poke around, but didn't want to do it with Itachi hovering awkwardly in the doorway. Instead she moved further into the room to inspect the shower. In what was possibly the weirdest bathroom design she'd ever seen, someone had obviously retrofitted an old whirlpool tub with a showerhead. The thing was massive and inconveniently placed to take up the entire space between what was probably her walk-in closet and the room on the other side of the bathroom.
"So this bathtub…" she trailed off, not even sure why she'd opened her mouth.
"Yes," Itachi replied, and then didn't say anything else. There was nothing else to say.
Sakura left the bathroom and Itachi turned once to the right until he stood in front of the door to Deidara's room.
"Oi, don't—" Deidara had apparently just come out of his coma, but it was too late and Itachi had opened the door.
It looked like a bomb had gone off. Everything also seemed to be covered in a fine layer of dust, possibly shaken loose by a bomb going off. Itachi coughed and carefully closed the door.
"He doesn't leave the rest of the house looking like that."
"God, Uchiha, could you just not, yeah? What if I'd had stuff laying around!"
"'Stuff,'" Itachi repeated without any inflection in his voice.
"Yeah," the blonde flushed red and clenched his teeth, "stuff."
Deidara seemed to have a bad habit of getting close to people when he was being confrontational. The part of Sakura that had always sounded a little too much like Ino was shouting Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!
"Well, fine, be that way," Deidara huffed even though Itachi hadn't said anything. "Let's see how you like it, yeah!"
With a dramatic stomp and a flounce he bounded across the hall to the room directly across from the bathroom and threw the door open.
How completely unsurprising that Itachi was the type of person who made his bed with precise military corners. Sakura's Ino-voice was wondering if this wasn't a sign that he was gay and Sakura should just give up now, but she forcefully shoved it away. Better to be the little sister than to not even be the right sex.
"Pardon me," Itachi said so blandly he might as well have been dragging his nails down a chalkboard with "SARCASM" written on it in large bolded letters, "I didn't put my shoes away when I came home."
With all the dignity of an annoyed Siamese cat he walked into his room, picked up the shoes lying crooked on the floor, and went to put them in his closet.
"You forgot your coat, yeah."
Deidara looked completely aware of how lame that was as a comeback, but equally stubbornly convinced he needed to say it anyway. Itachi retrieved the jacket flung over one bedpost and hung it on a coat hanger with precise movements, back ramrod straight.
Sakura mentally edited her list of reasons why she couldn't live here. Two hot guys who had some sort of petty rivalry-thing going on and lived next to each other? Way too distracting for roommates. And now she was thinking awful thoughts about Sasuke's big brother. Oh, god, Sasuke was going to hear her somehow from miles away and get her evicted, he could just sense these things.
"Anything else?"
Deidara actually looked like he was trying to find something else to criticize. Itachi looked like if Deidara didn't quit it shit was going to go down.
"Um!" Sakura squeaked, then winced when both of them stared at her. "I, uh, tour?"
Itachi instantly went from icy disdain to politely welcoming, face creasing into a gentle smile. It was disturbing because Sakura still thought he was pretty hot, odd bipolar facial expressions and all.
"That's the living room," Deidara cut in, trying to shoot Itachi a glare over her head and steer her down the hall at the same time. "We have cable and all these extra sports channels because Kisame likes that shit, yeah."
"And Netflix," Itachi added from behind her.
Sakura nodded without comment on the totally normal living room furniture and wide-screen TV, not sure if she should be happy they were apparently now competing over her, or weirded out by the strange sexual tension between them. Though some of that could just be her Ino-voice making things up.
"And here's the kitchen," the blonde continued, no longer pushing her when she'd proved capable of walking by herself.
"The washer and dryer are in 'the pantry,'—" he actually made air quotes as he spoke— "so we don't have a lot of space, yeah, but it beats having to go to the laundromat. You can keep some food in your room if you need to, or whatever, but the fridge is pretty big and Kisame's got the best knives."
She should probably be more worried by what Deidara considered important when describing a room than she actually was.
"We have a fully stocked kitchen," Itachi helpfully supplied, "with more than just knives."
Deidara threw up his hands in a "what do you want from me, yeah?" kind of way.
"Fine, whatever. Here," he yanked open the final door in the hallway, "last stop on the tour, Kisame's room."
It was very navy. Except for the bedspread, which appeared to be printed with the diver down flag, and as such was very red. Sakura gave the room the requisite once-over and paused when she saw the small fish tank sitting on one side of the dresser.
"Is Kisame a diver or something?"
"Worse, yeah. He's a sushi chef."
Sakura blinked. "But he has a fish?"
"That's Nemo."
Blinking again, she squinted at where the fish was lazily swimming around its bowl. "Isn't that just… a betta fish?"
"That fish has killed every other fish Kisame's tried to put in the tank. It's a monster, yeah." Deidara actually shot said "monster" fish a nervous glance, as if the small blue fish was liable to jump out of its tank and attack him. "That's why it's a good thing the knives in the kitchen are sharp."
He spoke as if this was a completely normal thing to say. Sakura turned away from Kisame's room expecting to see Itachi sporting a similar look of confusion, but Itachi wasn't there. Curiously she wandered down the hallway and poked her head into his room. Itachi was on his hands and knees rummaging in his closet. Sakura took exactly sixty seconds to memorize the sight of his ass waving in the air, then pulled away to rest her flushed face against the wall.
Reason Number Thirty-Four Why She Could Not Live Here: That Ass.
"What's wrong, yeah?"
Sakura jumped approximately a zillion feet in the air at the sound of Deidara's voice. Whirling around, she plastered on her best I'm-not-up-to-anything face and started thinking very deliberate thoughts not about Itachi's ass just in case Deidara was psychic too.
"N-nothing. Just, uh, wondering where Itachi went."
"He's probably just in his perfect room being perfect, yeah." The blonde rolled his eyes and leaned around her to look into the room.
Not sure if it was good idea even as she did it, Sakura followed his lead.
Itachi was holding up a sleeping bag looking slightly mussed and triumphant. He also looked adorable.
Sakura shot Deidara a quick look out of the corner of her eye to see if he was watching her and found him staring wide-eyed at Sasuke's older brother. He was blushing.
Reasons Number Thirty-Five to One-Hundred Trillion Why She Could Not Live Here: It would be the death of her.
"Oh, Sakura," Itachi had finally noticed them lurking in his doorway. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Deidara's astonished blushing face wiped clean and replaced with a sour I-just-sucked-a-lemon face.
"I know a sleeping bag won't be very comfortable, but there's no mattress in Sasori's old room."
Sakura nodded frantically, thanked him, and took the sleeping bag, wondering the entire time what was wrong with her and why she had to think of sucking at a time like this. This was all Ino's fault!
"I'm going to go, uh, settle in," she pasted a smile on her face and scurried back behind the purple curtain to get away from the madness and apply a liberal dose of brain bleach to her poor overwrought nerves. Sighing, she buried her face in the sleeping bag and took a deep breath.
It smelled like Itachi. At least she assumed the semi-spicy musk was Itachi. It also smelled a bit like the kind of stale air that would be at the back of someone's closet, but Sakura chose to focus on the spicy part and took another deep breath.
"Wait," Deidara said from behind her and Sakura, if possible, jumped more than a zillion feet in the air this time. "So are you staying here-staying here, or staying here-staying here, yeah?"
Slowly she turned around to look at him, wondering if the shock had finally made her lose it.
"Sorry, what?"
"Are you staying here-staying here, or are you staying here-staying here, yeah?"
When Sakura only stared at him in obvious confusion Deidara frowned and pointed at the room.
"Are you staying her for just a bit, or are you moving in?"
"The plain English version would have been more helpful the first time, I think," came Itachi's voice from elsewhere.
"Nobody asked you, Uchiha! I'm asking her," he pointed at Sakura with a semi-vicious jab.
Put on the spot she winced and lowered the sleeping bag.
"I don't know. I mean, I don't have a place to live yet, but I wanted to take a look around before I made a final decision."
"That's stupid, yeah. What's not to like?"
"The fact that her three other roommates would be older men?"
Was Itachi just standing out in the hallway snarking at Deidara, or…?
"What, like any of us is gonna mess with a junior karate champ? No thanks, I like my pertinent bits where they are, yeah."
"Sakura has to find somewhere she is comfortable living."
"Yeah, yeah," Deidara scoffed. "Well she's way better than Sasori anyway. That guy was a prick. And this way there's one more dangerous person between me and anyone who tries to break in." His eyes lit up with a sudden thought. "You ever been in a knife fight, yeah?"
Numbly, Sakura shook her head.
"Oh, well, I don't think Kisame's ever been in a karate fight before so you guys should be evenly matched."
"Kisame isn't going to fight Sakura." Itachi sounded icy, amused, and disapproving all at the same time, which was an interesting combination.
"Whatever, as if you don't want to see six-foot Shark Man get taken down by fifty pounds of pink!" He gave her what was probably meant to be a confident thumbs-up. "I think you could take him, knives and all, yeah."
"Leave Sakura alone. She's trying to settle in."
"No point settling in if she's not staying," Deidara muttered, but obediently ducked back behind the curtain. His blindingly bright blonde head was back a moment later. "Seriously though, don't sleep on that thing sleep on the couch, yeah, it's way more comfortable."
"Deidara."
"Fine," the other man rolled his eyes and retreated.
Sakura lowered herself to the floor and pressed her face against Itachi's dusty old sleeping bag. God help her, but she really wanted to stay here, even if her roommates would be three older men. She might go insane but it would never get boring. Though she seriously needed to invest in a door if she was going to stay. Otherwise she'd have a heart attack anytime someone popped in.
Too lazy to actually get up, Sakura crawled across the floor to her backpack and rummaged until she could pull out her laptop. After a moment spent contemplating the no signal bars she put her laptop down and crawled over to poke her head out of the curtain.
"Hey, Itachi, how do I get on the Wi-Fi?"
There was a brief pause, the reason for which became apparent when Itachi answered. "The network name is 'Do you know how many fucks I don't give' and the password is 'Akatsuki' only with four's for the A's and…" he trailed off and she heard a soft sigh. "I'm sorry, please wait a moment."
Itachi himself appeared in the hall with a piece of paper and handed it to her. The meticulously neat handwriting said: "Network: Do you know how many fucks I don't give; Password: 4K475UK1"
"One of the previous tenants set it up, and the landlord thinks it's too much trouble to change it." He seemed deeply embarrassed by this.
Itachi waited for her to try the password and make sure the Internet worked before going back across the hall to his room. Sakura then procrastinated the inevitability of checking her email by looking at all the other nearby networks that showed up on her computer's Wi-Fi locator, finally selecting the rather surreal "Who let the dogs use my Wi-Fi" as her favorite WTF name.
Craigslist was even more depressing after having seen the rest of the house. For one, most of the bathrooms were tiny. For another, a lot of the places just looked disgusting. For a third, Sakura couldn't even begin to imagine what some of the people writing the ads would be like in person. Maybe because it was already the start of the semester, but the people who'd emailed her back seemed particularly desperate and bonkers.
In comparison, her current situation seemed almost perfect. Sure Deidara was a little manic, but he didn't seem mean, and in a worst-case scenario Itachi seemed capable of exerting a little control over him. Itachi himself was surely the ideal roommate. He already knew and liked her, was respectful and helpful, and god, was he hot. Plus he was just as much of a mama's boy as his little brother, which would be helpful if she ever needed leverage. As long as Kisame wasn't a slavering weirdo she'd probably be ok here, even if they were all men.
The place itself wasn't too bad. Fairly clean, spacious, and in a good location. And Sasuke had said it was within her budget. Sasuke was exceedingly fastidious about these kinds of details, so when he said it was "within her budget" what he probably meant was "he'd had Itachi make him a spreadsheet of the past two years' worth of rent and utility bills just to make sure it was within her budget." In retrospect it was obvious Sasuke would push for the place because he thought keeping her under his older brother's eye would guarantee her safety and emotional well-being, but she appreciated that he'd come at her from the less obvious and sneakier angle of appealing to her pragmatism and money worries.
But Sakura was a thorough person, and she couldn't give in so easily. She checked three more email replies before reading one about "an Italian male in his late twenties who liked to cook and was looking for a female roommate who didn't mind a guy who was a little sensitive" before shuddering and giving up.
There was an IKEA five miles outside the city, too far by public transportation but Sakura knew for a fact that Itachi had a car he used when he came home for the holidays, and that he had a sweet tooth. Itachi had a regular day job and Sakura didn't start class until next week. There was plenty of time for bribery between now and the weekend. And living in an apartment full of guys practically guaranteed one of them would have tools. Probably Deidara. He'd need tools to build his bombs.
Sakura lost herself to the joys of online shopping before other concerns made themselves known, at which point she took a break to snoop. There weren't nearly as many Old Spice or Axe products in the bathroom as she had feared, someone in the house apparently preferring L'Oreal.
Sakura found three different mouthwash bottles of the same brand and flavor under the sink, each carefully separated to avoid getting mixed up. Thinking this particularly hilarious, she whipped out her phone and sent a Snapchat to Ino, and then sat on her heels on the bathroom rug and tried to puzzle out who each belonged to. The guessing game was somewhat spoiled when Sakura found a hairbrush with long blonde hair tucked behind one of the bottles, so she went back to poking around.
There was a bottle of fancy-looking lotion that smelled amazing when Sakura popped the cap. She made a mental note to use it at least once after she'd shaved her legs. There was also a large bright red container of kids' bubble bath with "DO NOT TOUCH" written on it in permanent marker. Sakura took another Snapchat and moved on, striking gold when she started opening drawers.
One was stuffed with what looked like a decade's worth of freebie samples from the dentist's office. Sakura had never seen that much dental floss in her entire life. But that was nothing compared to the next drawer, which was entirely filled with band-aids. Violating her look-but-don't-touch rule out of sheer morbid curiosity Sakura started sifting through the pile trying to see if there was anything else in it. There was no antiseptic cream or alcohol swabs, just band-aids. "Should I be worried?" she wrote and sent the Snapchat to Ino.
After the treasure trove of dental hygiene and the boo-boo bounty the rest of the bathroom was disappointingly mundane, though she did discover a tube of kids' "sparkle fun flavor" toothpaste.
Exiting the bathroom she nearly ran into Itachi in the hall. Sasuke's brother had half a cookie sticking out of his mouth and looked so like a chipmunk Sakura had the urge to take a picture right there and run away before he could say anything. It was a painfully hard urge to suppress.
Wordlessly, and most likely because his mouth was full, Itachi offered her the package. Sakura could have kissed him on his precious chubby cheek. It was the best sort of roommate who offered to share cookies.
The crinkling of the plastic had the interesting side-effect of summoning Deidara from his room, because the blonde appeared in his open doorway as she was wrestling with the infernal packaging for a bite of sweet chocolate-chip goodness.
"Are you spoiling your appetite," he accused, pointing a finger first at Itachi, and then at her. "Kisame just told me he was coming home and he's bringing some stuff, yeah, so you can't spoil your appetite!"
Itachi shrugged in what Sakura would recognize anywhere as an "I'm an adult I can do what I want" shrug. Deidara hmphed and crossed his arms over his chest.
Wordlessly, because her mouth was full this time, Sakura offered him the package. For a second Deidara looked thrilled and reached eagerly for the container. Then he seemed to recall himself and who he was standing in front of because he took the cookie package with an eye roll and pulled it open with what was possibly the grumpiest, must put-upon pout ever. Sakura was struck with the urge to take a picture of him and put it in a frame next to Itachi's picture.
In retrospect this was probably the moment Sakura should have said no, packed up all of her stuff, and fled into the night bound for the warm embrace of a soulless, money-sucking hotel rather than continue seriously considering signing the lease and moving in with these weirdoes.
Well, they did always say hindsight was twenty/twenty.
The front door opened and someone called out in a very deep voice attempting to be not-so-deep, "Lucy, I'm hoooome!"
The door shut, and what sounded like Attila the Hun and the entire Hun Army started stomping its way down the hall towards them.
This was how Sakura first met Kisame: Half a cookie hanging out of her mouth, and standing next to Itachi and Deidara, who each also had half a cookie hanging out of their mouths, or really, three-fourths of a cookie in Itachi's case because he'd started before them.
Kisame was a giant with bright blue hair and facial tattoos. He looked like the sort of person who should've been a bouncer at a casino in Vegas, not a sushi chef. Compared to Itachi who'd grown non-threatening after years of acquaintance and learning his tells, or Deidara who also had a deep voice but wasn't very tall and had the sort of carefully maintained blonde hair Sakura was beginning to strongly suspect required L'Oreal products after years of friendship with Ino, Kisame was a very big, very threatening man.
So it was no surprise that Sakura choked and nearly dropped her cookie when he looked down at them with disappointed eyes and said gravely, "Are you guys spoiling your appetites?"
Itachi was the first to recover simply because he was the first to finish eating. Calmly, he took the cookie package back from Deidara and held it out towards Kisame.
"It was only one cookie."
"Itachi," Kisame sighed, shaking his head at the offering. "Why am I not surprised this is your fault. You're old enough to know better than to let a kid spoil her appetite before dinner." He cast a critical eye over her in a way that was highly reminiscent of Mikoto Uchiha when she hadn't seen Sakura in a while, and thus didn't know what she'd been eating.
"Though you look like you could use about four more cookies before it did anything. Did they offer to feed you when you got here, are you hungry? Itachi, Deidara, did you guys feed her?"
He turned his giant disappointed eyes back on the other two men and both of them quailed, obviously remembering they'd been far too busy sniping at each other to offer her anything.
Sakura, who'd been trying to finish her cookie as quickly as possible, paused as a sudden horrifying thought came to her.
Hot Guy Number One wanted to be her big brother. Hot Guy Number Two thought she was just a kid. And to complete the set, Hot Guy Number Three—because Kisame was surprisingly built for a sushi chef; did handling knives every day make him good with his hands? Go away, Ino-voice!—who was currently scolding two grown-ass men about being bad hosts, wanted to be her mom.
This was terrible! She'd just gotten here and she was already in the friend-zone! Why was this her life!
"Well," Big Blue Guy said after he'd finished turning his roommates into embarrassed nine-year-old boys, "I'm Kisame, in case you didn't already know."
Numbly, still in a state of shock over the turn of events that had led to her being adopted by three men in the course of only a few hours, Sakura shook the dinner-plate-sized hand he presented her with, barely thinking about how it was as big as her head. Was the rest of him to scale? Ino-voice wondered.
Kisame continued talking, unaware of the highly inappropriate direction of her thoughts.
"And I've brought dinner, which is why I said not to spoil your appetites."
"It's not even dinner-time yet, yeah," Deidara grumbled, obviously hoping childish misdirection would save him from another lecture.
"Wedding party rented the restaurant out for the evening, but they're all drunk now so they sent me home," Kisame shrugged. "I don't think we've ever run out of soy sauce before. Those people are going to be so dehydrated tomorrow talk about the worst hangover ever."
He shook his head in parental disapproval and held up several large plastic bags Sakura had so far missed in her distraction by all that was Kisame.
"But, hey, big parties always mean lots of freebies, which is great because Itachi told me we have a guest."
And he smiled down at Sakura with disturbingly sharp-looking teeth. She gulped and shakily returned the smile.
"Uh, yeah, I'm Sakura."
Kisame chuckled and gave her what was probably meant to be a friendly pat on the shoulder that nearly dislocated her spine.
"Good job," he said to Itachi. "She's cute!"
Sakura had about two seconds to glow over being called cute before he ruined it by adding, "I didn't know you knew any girls!"
He and Deidara laughed like this was the funniest thing ever while Itachi did his very best impression of a two by four. Her Ino-voice started jumping up and down and wailing He's gay! but Sakura quickly smothered it before Sasuke, or worse, Mikoto could telepathically overhear. Saying that lady didn't want grandbabies was like saying Naruto hated ramen.
"Wh-what did you bring!" She smiled with a lot of fake enthusiasm, some of which became real when Itachi shot her a genuinely grateful look.
"Oh? That's the spirit, I like a girl with a good appetite! I got a really good spread this time," he trailed off as he moved into the kitchen to set the bags down on the table and start unpacking them, naming each item as it was removed.
"Let's see, I've got some sushi odds and ends, miso soup, leftover tempura—" Sakura smothered a happy gasp— "though I should probably pop that in the broiler first, pork and vegetable dumplings, grilled beef and vegetables, chicken katsu—" "Katsu!" Deidara cried, nearly scaring Sakura out of her skin, though Itachi and Kisame didn't even blink. "—and last but not least, duck breast."
Kisame placed the final take-away container down on the table with a dramatic flourish, then frowned at it.
"I wanted to bring home some ice cream, but I was pretty sure it'd melt in the bag with all this other stuff." And he looked at her with his big sad eyes. "Sorry, kid."
Sakura smiled hesitantly, a little touched that he'd thought of her, a stranger he'd never met, when thinking about what to bring home.
"That's ok, but could I have the tempura?"
Kisame grinned and there were so many teeth. It was going to take a while to get used to all those teeth.
"Sure thing, I'll fry up the broiler right now and pop it in for you, should only take a couple of minutes. In the meantime go ahead and dig in."
Someone tapped her on shoulder and Sakura turned to find Deidara holding a plate with an expression of unholy glee. He made to reach around her after she took it, intent on one of the open containers, but Itachi elbowed him in the side, raising a single eyebrow and staring him down with an imperiously arched eyebrow until he backed off.
Sakura stifled a laugh at the angry glower on the blonde's face and bent to examine the various containers. All of the food seemed at least lukewarm, so Sakura decided in the interest of being hungrier than she was patient that she'd eat as-is and started loading up her plate with a little of everything. The sushi "odds and ends," she discovered as she shuffled over to give Deidara room, were exactly that: what looked like: one or two pieces of different types of rolls that were a little too smushed or lopsided to be given to the customers.
"What type of sushi is this?"
"I believe that one is an asparagus roll," Itachi murmured from directly behind her, sending little shivers down her spine from his hot breath against the side of her neck. "There's spicy tuna, California, dragon and, oh, eel—"
"Who cares?" Deidara interrupted, and Sakura both felt and heard a scuffle take place at her back. "You only live once, just try it!"
"Sakura might have something she dislikes, or allergies," there was Itachi's icy voice again.
"Pretty sure she wouldn't be looking at the sushi if she was allergic to it, Uchiha."
"Not everyone lives their life trusting to the vagaries of fate like you do."
"Yeah, and not everyone lives their life as a passive-aggressive control freak like you do."
And before Itachi could reply Deidara deftly scooped up some sushi with a fork and deposited it on her plate, pushing her to the side so he could have a turn. Sakura just blinked and stared at him until a touch on her shoulder made her turn.
"You want something to drink? We've got milk, and Itachi's got some sort of sugary sludge pretending to be juice, and water obviously. Oh, and beer if you want one."
"Kisame, Sakura is the same age as my brother."
"As if you'd never had a beer at eighteen, Uchiha. God, Kisame's not going to get the girl drunk calm down already, yeah."
Just like that the two of them devolved back into petty squabbling, Itachi's sarcastic, carefully modulated voice interspersed with Deidara's outraged squawking. When she turned away from the bickering Sakura found Kisame's cheerful expression had been rearranged into one of exasperated amusement. She cast another look at the two other men, but they didn't seem interested in anything beyond their argument.
"Are they, uh, always like this?"
Kisame responded with an eye roll that somehow seemed to include her, a person he'd known for about fifteen minutes, in on the joke.
"The bromance is strong with those two."
Suddenly Sakura was imagining another Uchiha and another puts-his-foot-in-his-mouth blonde and epic arguments where one side got really loud as the other side fired back with rapid, cutting remarks in the same smooth voice. She blanched.
Itachi had always seemed so above that, and maybe that was because in some ways she only knew him through Sasuke's biased eyes, but still. And, ok, so Shisui was his best friend and Shisui was also the sort to be exuberant and passionate and unrestrained, but he was their cousin and Sakura had always thought there had to be something in common between him and Itachi because of the family relation.
But no, apparently Uchiha were just unfortunately attracted to their polar opposites. Which, really, explained so much about why Fugaku always looked put-upon and cranky when he was around Naruto's mom. Their entire family was full of dorks—well except for Mikoto who was perfect as long as nobody brought up babies or being hungry.
"Oh my god," she said to Kisame as she tried to stifle the burgeoning laughter that came along with this new world view, "really?"
"Yeah," he agreed, as Deidara accused Itachi of being "the most unartistic prick ever, yeah, who did he think he was some all-holy prodigy who'd single-handedly save the world with his vision, the myth of the individual genius is dead, asshole" in the background.
"You get used to it." Then, raising his voice, "Oi, no foreplay at the dinner table, there are kids here and grumpy old men who don't wanna see that shit."
The silence was abrupt, and awkward, and very affronted.
Sakura looked at Kisame, whose too-many-teeth grin was big and shit-eating, and he looked at her.
"I'm not a kid, and you're not that old." Then: "And I want that beer."
"You're alright, kid," he laughed. "Go sit down in the living room and maybe we can all agree on what to watch on TV."
She went and sat in the living room, trailed by a furious-looking Deidara and a subdued Itachi, both of whom wouldn't look at each other and sat as far apart as possible. Glancing around once she'd settled herself on the couch and the plate on her lap, she found the remote sitting on a side table next to Deidara, but didn't want to ask for it with Deidara glaring like he'd set the world on fire just to watch it burn.
It was several long, silent moments before Kisame appeared with a plate of tempura and a bottle of beer. He took one look at the room before sighing—there was no denying who was the house mom around here—and snatching up the TV remote. Deidara perked up at the talking heads on ESPN SportsCenter, making grabby hands at Kisame until he handed over the remote with an eye roll.
Even semi-cold the food was delicious and Sakura stuffed her face with happy abandon, hardly registering when Kisame took the last available seat on the couch next to her. She did notice when he came back the second time with the remainder of the duck breast and offered her the container with a pinched-together-eyebrows mom look that clearly said he didn't think she'd eaten enough. It was on the tip of her tongue to argue until he started cajoling Itachi into eating more vegetables with the ultimatum that he was going to "hide the sugar again, don't think I didn't see you this morning before you left that wasn't coffee it was coffee-flavored sugar do you want to become a diabetic?" Sakura ate the rest of the duck breast without comment, not sure she wanted to be on the receiving end of Kisame's mothering after seeing Itachi fold like a crappy cardboard box in the rain.
Instead she sat and finished her food, and after that was gone she finished her beer and just watched the guys around her under the pretense of watching the TV. At first she was a little annoyed because, seriously, could Deidara not stick with a single channel for more than five minutes? But it soon became apparent after more careful observation that he and Itachi were up to something again, only they were doing it under some bizarre vow of silence.
The blonde would settle on a channel, dart a quick look at Itachi to judge his reaction, and then fidget however long until the next commercial break when he could flip channels under the guise of impatience rather than seem like he was seeking Itachi's approval. This process repeated itself several times until they ended up with the tail end of an episode of Supernatural, both Itachi and Deidara content to sit back and watch now that they'd nonverbally agreed on something together.
Deidara was slumped in his seat like he was half-jellyfish, picking absently at the remains of a dumpling, expression one of satisfied lethargy. Across the room Itachi was watching the TV with half-closed eyes, looking as similar to a contented cat as it was possible for a human being to look. Kisame caught her eye then and managed to convey that he was seeing exactly what she was seeing and finding it just as hilarious with nothing but a single quirk of her lips.
It was simply too much, and Sakura broke down into great heaving peals of laughter, Kisame laughing like an avalanche next to her.
She could imagine living here all too easily. There probably wouldn't always be free food, and she doubted their schedules would always align so neatly, and maybe she was being too trusting about guys—in Deidara and Kisame's case—she'd known for less than a day, but that could be said about any randos she happened to meet through Craigslist. Her main concern when Sasuke had heavily hinted that she should live here was that she'd feel uncomfortable around a house full of only men, but Sakura didn't feel uncomfortable around them at all.
She could honestly imagine hanging out like this all the time. It felt like they were already friends. And it certainly didn't hurt that they were easy on the eyes. Take that, Ino-Pig!
"Ok," Kisame said once he'd recovered his breath. "I don't know if you guys talked about this before I came home, but I'm just going to ask: Are you staying here for a couple of days, or are you thinking about moving in? Itachi was somewhat vague in his phrasing."
"I, uh, I wasn't sure at first. I was planning on looking around to see what my options are, but—"
"Why?" Deidara was leaning forward in his chair, eyes intent and fixed on her face. "Do you not like us, yeah?"
"Maybe if you could think before speaking for once in your life," Itachi sighed.
Instead of shooting back with a sharp retort, Deidara actually seemed to deflate a little, looking hurt and guilty. Sakura wanted to go over and give him a hug.
"I said I was sorry, yeah." The petulance of the words was undermined by his remorseful tone of voice.
"Do I want to know?" Kisame had both eyebrows raised when he looked at her, a frown twisting his lips.
"Oh, he just… said a thing. It's fine, seriously not a big deal," she added quickly when Kisame's frown deepened, "I took care of it, and he did say he was sorry."
The blonde leaned forward in his chair at this pronouncement, making unhappy eyes at her from under his long bangs in a way that reminded Sakura far too much of those super sad ASPCA commercials.
"Anyway, I've been thinking about it and I like you, all of you."
In about two seconds Deidara went from being the poster boy for animal cruelty to a kid finding out Christmas had come early. Sakura had her mouth open to keep speaking, but could only sit there gaping at the swift change.
"Don't mind Deidara," Kisame chuckled, no doubt at her unattractive fish-faced surprise, "he's one of those sensitive artistic types, so he gets his feelings hurt easily."
"I'm not sensitive!" Deidara exploded, taking another sharp right straight into impassioned indignation. "I just don't know what to do with" he mumbled something that sounded like "new squirrels" and ended with his customary "yeah."
Itachi, who must have had fantastic hearing to catch that and understand enough to reply, crossed his arms over his chest.
"You thought she was about fifteen."
"That doesn't mean I didn't think she was cute!"
In the silence that followed Deidara got so red it looked like someone had dumped a bottle of ketchup over his head and conveniently missed his hair. Sakura would have been more flattered if she wasn't suddenly thinking about one of her potential new roommates being a raging nymphomaniac.
"Well," Kisame said, eyebrows up at his hairline, "I think I missed something interesting earlier."
"That came out wrong, yeah! I don't mean it like that, damn it, I work with kids all day and they are sly little bastards, but the cute ones are the worst."
Now he seemed to be implying that cuteness meant she was some sort of threat? Sakura wasn't sure she was following Deidara's strange twists of logic anymore.
"What exactly do you do?"
"I'm an artist, yeah."
There was a pause before Itachi spoke with the air of the long-suffering.
"He works in children's programming at the Art Museum."
"Being an artist isn't cheap, you know. I gotta pay the bills somehow."
"You say that like the kids don't love you," Kisame laughed.
"Those damn brats! You try to explain what Cubism means for art and it's like they think it's just some funny pictures on a wall."
Sakura, who very much thought Cubism was "just some funny pictures on a wall," tried instead to look like she knew exactly what he was talking about and agreed.
"And don't even get me started on the teenagers, yeah, they're the fucking worst. Tradition and traditional media is dead, I know, it should all be burned just blow it the fuck up, but you gotta know what's happened before to know where you're going and they don't even care with their boredom and their sarcastic comments. The museum institution is shit, I get that, but—"
"I think," Itachi interrupted with a polite cough, "Sakura was telling us something."
"Right," Sakura said, sitting up straight when everyone looked at her, "uh, yeah. So I was just thinking that maybe I wouldn't mind living here. I mean, if you'd have me?"
Itachi smiled like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. Sakura felt her heart do a barrel roll in her chest and quickly turned to the others before her face could burst into flames. Deidara looked childishly happy, all ire with angsty teenagers forgotten. Kisame was beaming like a proud parent, and Sakura had a moment of doubtful worry over becoming a target for his mothering before Itachi spoke up.
"Obviously, you're under no obligations to live here, Sakura. We initially agreed you could stay for a few days before you made up your mind, and that hasn't changed."
"I know, but I want to stay here." She raised her eyebrows and gave him an arch look. "I mean, have you seen the weirdoes on Craigslist lately?"
"Damn it, Itachi," Kisame chuckled, "are you trying to scare the kid off? I'm the one fielding the responses to our Craigslist ad, and it's like every idiot in the city who's into juicing wants to live in our apartment. And you know how Kakuzu is—that's our landlord," he said in an aside to Sakura. "The impatient bastard doesn't care who lives here as long as they can pay rent and won't break shit. Pretty sure we couldn't do much better than a girl you've known since she was like six and who's friends with your brother for our fourth."
"I dunno what the problem is, yeah. If she wants to stay here I'm cool with it. 'S not like we've got some deep horrifying secret you need to warn her away from, or whatever."
"Sakura would be living in a house with three other men, which I know she's never done before."
While she could appreciate Itachi's concern for her safety and peace of mind, it was obvious he wanted her to stay just as badly, if not more, than the others. What Kisame had said about their undiscerning landlord had rattled him, and she didn't think he'd forgotten her earlier rant about Craigslist horror stories.
"So we'll establish some ground rules, make sure she feels comfortable. It's cute you're being overprotective of the girl, Itachi, but it's her decision too."
Itachi sighed, though whether at being defeated by Kisame's calm rationale—which was her personal hope—or at being teased for thinking her "cute" and in need of protection—a less favorable option—she didn't know.
"Alright, please wait a moment." He returned with a yellow legal pad, balancing it over his knee as he uncapped a pen. "We should probably begin by going over the pre-existing house rules. Kisame?"
"We have a minimum cleanliness standard, which I doubt you'll have a problem meeting, but was established because some people," he looked very pointedly at Deidara, who had assumed an expression of offended innocence, "needed more direction. Basically clean up after yourself, especially in the kitchen, bathroom, and other common areas. What you do in your own room is your business as long as it doesn't damage the house."
"Tch," Deidara scoffed, "ok, my turn. No Brats," he folded his arms over his chest and looked at her. "It's cool if you have your friends over who are the same age, but kids aren't allowed. I see enough of them at work I don't wanna see them at home too."
He glared at Itachi, seemingly preemptively, and finished with, "And, no, I don't know where you'd be getting kids from, yeah, and I don't care."
"We don't all keep the same hours," Itachi said as if unaware of the blonde trying to stare a hole in his face, though it was obvious from the way he spoke that his words were not really directed at her, "but some of us actually enjoy sleeping at night before our day jobs, so please avoid excessively loud behavior after midnight."
Kisame stepped in before the atmosphere could get any tenser, assuming his self-assigned duty as mediator. "Itachi and Deidara work regular nine-to-five day jobs so you won't see them much during the day. I usually work evenings, so if you're home from class during the day you'll probably see me a lot more." He paused to look at Itachi. "Did we have any other important rules?"
"Clean up, no kids, no loud noises," he tapped his pen against the legal pad in thought. "We usually take turns buying household supplies, and we're not very strict about sharing food—"
"Except Uchiha will eviscerate you if you get into his sweets stash."
"—as long as you ask permission," Itachi continued as if Deidara hadn't said anything. "When Kisame brings home leftovers those are usually first-come, first-serve."
"Speaking of household supplies, we're running out of paper towels no thanks to a certain someone."
"One time," Deidara protested loudly, "you try to make spaghetti one time, yeah, and nobody will let you forget it."
"Which reminds me of an important rule," Itachi said, lips pursed in disapproval. "Don't let Deidara cook. Ever."
"He's not allowed in the kitchen unsupervised," Kisame elaborated. A sly grin curled his mouth and he leaned in close to her as if to share a secret. "Have you ever seen what happens to popcorn on the surface of the sun?"
It wasn't hard to guess where he was going with his comment, but Sakura shook her head and played along. As much as Kisame seemed to take responsibility for improving his roommates' bad habits, he also didn't seem to mind poking fun at the two younger men.
"This one time Deidara set the microwave on fire. After we'd cleaned all the fire extinguisher gunk out we find these hard black kernels, like big peppercorns," he pinched two fingers close together to demonstrate. "It was the popcorn burnt down into charred little cocoa pebbles."
At that moment Deidara could have out-pouted a five-year-old having a temper tantrum, and oh, god, it was adorable, Sakura wanted to ruffle his hair and kiss his pouty cheeks. Shocked at the surge of fluffy feelings suffusing her chest, she looked over to find Kisame grinning his shit-eating grin again. For a second Sakura honestly debated giving him a high-five.
"The point I was trying to make," Kisame snorted indelicately at the blonde's glare, "is that we need to make a Costco run, and if Sakura's staying here she probably wants to make a trip to IKEA because she doesn't have a mattress, or any furniture, and that means—"
"Field trip!" Deidara's sudden enthusiasm was infectious. "Only let's leave Uchiha at home, he was a total downer last time, yeah."
"We didn't need all of those spoons. Especially not when we could've just gone to Target if we did need spoons that badly."
"Such a primadonna, yeah, this is why you never get laid, Uchiha, you don't know how to have fun."
Itachi opened his mouth, no doubt for some devastatingly sardonic reply, caught sight of Sakura's face, and blushed. And wasn't that interesting, Sakura had never seen him blush before.
You're going to be living with him, Ino-voice reminded her, which means you just might see him in his pajamas, or his underwear, or getting out of the shower with nothing but a towel around his hips, and her filthy mind immediately presented her with a situation where she bumped into him and he blushed in embarrassment just as he was doing now.
"Moving on," Itachi coughed, nowhere near as calm as he'd been before, "we haven't discussed Sakura's rules, or the things she needs to feel comfortable here."
"Uh," Sakura stuttered, frantically pulling herself away from a fantasy where all of her hot male roommates wandered around the apartment in nothing but towels for no explainable reason other than her being a sick awful person, "I, um, a door. Privacy is one thing, but once school starts I'm definitely going to need quiet to do my homework and study."
"Privacy," Itachi repeated, pen scribbling as Sakura congratulated herself on a smooth save, "of course, go on."
"Right," Sakura agreed, trying to think until she suddenly remembered the single most obvious reason for her hesitation about rooming with guys.
"Well I'm, uh, a girl." Itachi nodded supportively, looking confused but ready to keep taking notes. "I mean I'm, um, especially a girl. Once a month. For the foreseeable future. And also definitely to avoid violating the 'no kids' house rule."
She cracked her lips into a shaky smile, mentally kicking herself for babbling something stupid in a foolish attempt at lightening the mood with humor. In the ensuring silence the only noise came from Itachi mumbling "privacy" to himself again, followed by two long scratches of the pen as if he'd underlined the word. There was a pause and then he said "chocolate" and "carbs" and underlined those too.
The first to actually speak was Kisame, and he did so with an understanding smile and a large warm hand on her shoulder.
"That's no problem. We'll get you an extra trash can for under the sink in the bathroom if you want."
But where would the mouthwash go? Sakura asked herself somewhat nonsensically.
"And you can have first pick for the TV. It'll be fine, don't worry."
"But will that be enough, yeah?" Deidara looked a little pale, just like when she'd told him about being a junior Olympian. "What about all those mood swings?" It sounded like he thought her period made her beat people up. Which was unfair, really, she'd done that to Naruto once and he'd learned his lesson.
"Have you looked in the mirror lately? Pretty sure if mood swings were limited to women there'd be something you needed to tell us." Kisame's voice was a little sharp, but his hand was still warm on her shoulder, her neck, and part of her back because it was seriously that massive. He gave her a brief squeeze before letting her go, her skin tingling in the wake of that heat.
"Being that freaked out about menstruation, of all things, just proves you've never had a serious girlfriend, you know."
"That's right," Itachi cleared his throat. "It's perfectly healthy, nothing to be ashamed of."
He was blushing again, just a hint of pink on the tops of his cheekbones, but still. That was nothing compared to Deidara who was beet red again and sputtering helplessly. She was struck with the urge to give Kisame a kiss on the cheek for coming to her rescue and turning a situation she found personally embarrassing into one where she wanted to laugh instead.
"Ok," she smiled at the man on the couch next to her, "if we're going on an IKEA trip I'm going to need help putting that stuff together."
She was perfectly capable of putting together IKEA furniture, was far better at handyman fix-it things than Sasuke or Naruto had ever been, but her new roommates didn't know that. Grandmother Tsunade had very specific instructions on what to do when hot men were involved. Not only was it rude, but she'd shame her grandmother if she didn't take advantage of help when it was freely offered.
Kisame returned her smile without noticing the shark-like-ness of her expression, perhaps because his own smile was too shark-like for him to find her smile discomfiting.
"Don't worry, kid, we've got you covered."
Living here was probably going to turn her into an awful person, or a worse person, anyway. Ino-voice's opinions on being "covered" didn't even bear thinking about. At least not until she was somewhere private.
Sakura helped with dinner cleanup as much as she was allowed when Deidara was unanimously declared dishwashing lackey for too many foot-in-mouth comments. Said "help" then took the form of assisting Kisame in flicking water at Deidara's sleek blonde hair while Itachi looked on in amusement. The blonde retaliated by flinging sudsy water everywhere, then sulked outrageously when he had to clean it up. Still, he grinned up at her through his bangs when she laughed at him, so Sakura didn't think he was too mad all things considered.
Itachi was the first to wish her goodnight, citing that he wanted to get up early for work to make up the hours he'd missed, and promising to print her a copy of the rental agreement the next day. Deidara went next, wringing water out of his hair as he headed straight for the bathroom. Sakura shared an eye roll with Kisame at the inconsistency, feeling like she'd already been there a week instead of less than a day. He invited her to stick around and have another beer, but Sakura declined to go to her room. If she was staying here she should actually unpack.
Sleeping on the floor was going to be hard and painful, but Sakura could survive until the weekend. She arranged several sweatshirts into a passable pillow and crawled into her makeshift bed with the phone she'd neglected all day.
Ino and Naruto had collectively sent her almost fifty texts, so she settled in to run damage control.
"How's the train ride" read Ino's first text, followed soon after with "?" and "Forehead did you get in ok?" Sakura continued reading through the backlogged texts, stopping briefly on "Ok I heard you're staying with Sasuke's hot older brother," which meant Ino had probably called Naruto and he'd spilled the beans.
"What's up are the other guys hot?"
"Foreheeeeeead you better not be holding out on me"
"Ok I got your snapchats good to know you're not dead"
"Nice of you to send me snapchats but not text back btw"
"Wtf is up with all the bandaids?"
"Forehead I swear to god text me back already"
"Ok fine geez I got ahold of Sasuke he says the other guys are 'fine' whatever the heck that means"
"If you don't text me back in the next hour I'm going to assume you're dead"
"Wait but if they're all hot maybe you've lost your Forehead-y inhibitions and are having a hot kinky foursome right this minute"
"If so as your best friend I guess I can't interrupt you"
"But I want DETAILS! Forehead!"
"You hear me!"
"Ok omg creeping on Sasuke's brother's facebook wall," presumably because she'd bullied Naruto into giving her the password to Sasuke's account.
"All of these dude are hot you have all the luck Forehead"
"You'd BETTER be having an amazing sexual experience right now or I may never forgive you"
The last text had been about an hour ago, Sakura saw. Amused, she sent off a quick "Yes, Ino, all of them are crazy hot, but I'm pretty sure I'm like hella in the friend-zone right now nothing's gonna happen." before looking over Naruto's texts.
"hey so heard teme has u staying w/ teme's bro"
"thats good itachi wont let anything happen to u"
"not that u cant take care of urself cuz u can"
Then, about half an hour later "hey can u text ino back shes really annoying"
"omg shes so loud how r u friends w/ her?" As if he wasn't just as loud as Ino, Sakura thought and rolled her eyes.
"ok she said something about teme's bro being hot thats so gross can u tell her i dont wanna hear that"
"whats this about aLL THE oTHER DUDES R HOT?!"
"SAKURA R U SURROUNDED BY MEN DONT LET THEM TAINT U SAKURA"
"I AM A MAN SO I KNO MEN SAKURA DONt lET THEM FOOL U"
"MEN R ONLY AFTR 1 THING SAKURA"
"SHUT UP TEME I DONT CARE IF HES UR BROTHR"
"U LED SAKURA INTO A DEN OF DEBAURCHERY ILL NEVER FORGIVE U FOR TAINTING SAKURA"
Where Naruto had learned a word like "debauchery," even if he'd spelled it wrong, Sakura would never know. The texts continued in a similar vein.
"STAY STRONG SAKURA U SHOULD KICK ALL OF THEIR ASSES"
"U CAN DO IT I BELIEVE IN U SAKURA"
"U SHOULD KICK TEMES ASS TOO FOR BEING A TEME"
"WE R NOT BFFFS ANYMORE"
"AND WE R NEVER EVR EVR GETTING BACK 2GETHR"
"NOT EVR"
Sakura snorted into her hand and texted back: "Naruto, chill, I'm not in a 'den of debauchery' everyone is very nice including Itachi. You can stop not speaking to Sasuke now he didn't get me 'into' anything."
The two would be speaking again by tomorrow even without her running damage control, but Sakura felt she had to at least try and fix the situation since Naruto was only trying to look after her in his usual over-the-top manner.
There were no texts from Sasuke aside from the ones he'd sent her on the train, probably because unlike Ino and Naruto he could stay calm for longer than five minutes at a time.
Sakura sent him "So have you met Itachi's roommates before?" And her phone buzzed several seconds later with "Kisame's ok. Deidara's an idiot."
For a moment Sakura tried to imagine the circumstances under which Sasuke had met the other two men, tried to picture Sasuke watching his brother snarking with Deidara so similarly to how Sasuke snarked with Naruto, and couldn't stop her laughter. She was still laughing when her phone vibrated again.
"Well then you'd better get them out of the friendzone," Ino had replied, "and into the BANGZONE"
Sakura squawked and threw her phone across the floor.
I firmly believe that there's room in AU for a Tsunade who never becomes a bamf medical prodigy, but is still a kickass lady teaching other ladies to be kickass too.
If you don't think Deidara having lots of Opinions About Art and Art History and trying to teach them to small children isn't comedy gold I don't even know what to do with you. He just wants them to understand.
Have you accepted Momsame into your life as your favorite Naruto Maternal Figure?
If you laughed even once while reading I will have accomplished my purpose in writing this.