A collection of stories, mostly connected but not necessarily in chronological order. AU.

01. Sasuke knocks down her door, Sakura knocks him out.

Sakura stared down at the unconscious boy on her floor, up at the dishevelled boy standing the doorway of her flat, cleared her throat, and then blinked several times in lieu of making an actual response.

The boy at her door looked as shocked as she felt. Neither of them said anything for a minute, choosing instead to stare at each other, him at the unconscious dark figure on her floor, Sakura at the stranger in the orange shorts and tattered white shirt.

He was quite beautiful, she noted detachedly. All messy blonde hair and clear blue eyes, jaw line sharpened by a slight shadow . Attractive, in a wiry sort of way.

"For fucks sake."

"What the hell," Sakura blurted out finally, half convinced she was trapped in some drug induced hallucination featuring two very beautiful boys and one door knocked cleanly off its hinges. She'd come home after a 48 hour shift at the hospital and now that the adrenaline from the excitement was fading the exhaustion of the day was catching up with her. Belatedly she realised her toe hurt like a motherfucker.

"God, I'm so sorry about this," He groaned, slapping his forehead. Sakura nodded him in, wondering if inviting a second stranger into her apartment in the middle of the night to clean up the mess made by the first was really the wisest decision, but it was late and she was too tired to give a shit anymore.

"So um," he laughed sheepishly, "I'll just take him back, shall I." He moved towards the dark haired boy, bending forward, looking slightly concerned. Then he kicked him in the leg, hard enough to bruise. So much for concern.

"Who - "

"Sasuke," said the blond quickly, waving his hand at the ground, "And I'm – "

"Naruto," Sakura finished, remembering waking up to terrifying and mostly unintelligible shouts. 'NARUTO!' She'd sat up in bed, heart pounding, wondering what the hell was going on, when threats of 'Open the g'ddamn door Naruto or'll -!' accompanied by crash had had her jumping out of bed and running to the door, thankful that she'd actually changed her clothes that night, instead of passing out in her underwear as she was prone to do these days. She had reached the doorway just as is it was knocked off one of its hinges, swinging open wildly and crashing into the wall, and a tall dark figure stepped into her flat, reeking of whiskey.

I'm going to fucking die.

"No asshole!" Sakura had screamed, determined that if she was going to die tonight, she wasn't going to go down without a fight. She flew at the figure with a kick, miscalculating the distance and falling short, and then compensating with a punch in the throat. There was a shocked, choking sound and sakura moved out of the way as he fell forward, down on his knees before she kicked him in the face, finally knocking him out.

In hind sight she probably should just have called for help instead of trying to kill a full grown man herself, aided only by half-forgotten self defence learnt from movies and one summer in a dojo a lifetime ago.

"Yeah," Naruto nodded, now looking at the blood pooling around Sasuke's face. "I think you broke his nose."

"He tried to break into my house," Sakura said defensively. "He did break into my house. He literally broke down my door."

"Yeah I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it," Naruto stood between Sasuke's legs and grabbed his feet, holding them up like ski poles. "He's kind of an asshole."

Sakura agreed wholeheartedly. Not only had she been very rudely awoken from a very deep sleep, fixing the door was going to cost a fucking fortune. She told Naruto to hang on for a minute as she pulled a bottle of the coldest water she could find in her fridge and poured in all over Sasuke's face.

Sasuke snored softly.

Naruto swore, and she watched as he made to drag the prone boy out of her apartment and back into his own, except the fact that Sasuke was lying face down and that his legs kept bending at the knee meant he was getting very little leverage. At first Naruto rejected Sakura's offers of help but agreed after ten full minutes of huffing and sweating resulted in Sasuke being pivoted 2 inches to the left and no further towards the intended destination.

Sakura was stronger than she looked and Sasuke was tall and thin, so between the two of them they should have been able to move him, even slightly. She squatted near Sasuke's head, carefully avoiding the blood, gripped his shoulders, and pushed. She pushed so hard.

"Hey Sasuke? Sasuke." She tapped his face.

Her own shoulders were starting to ache. Sasuke seemed to be glued to the floor. Naruto shook his legs violently, adding another kick to his side for good measure.

"Sasuke wake up! Fuck, this is impossible."

Her thighs were beginning to burn.

"How can he be this heavy?," Sakura gasped, jumping up as a cramp shot through her shin.

"He doesn't look it," Naruto groaned, dropping Sasuke's legs. There was a thud as they fell awkwardly, but their owner did not seem to care. "But believe me, he's a fucking fat ass."

Sakura's arms had begun to burn and she was starting to feel slightly dizzy the blood rushing to her head from the strain so she suggested that they leave him on the floor for the night, and invited Naruto in for coffee instead.

"Are you sure?" Naruto asked, wiping his forehead with the back of his sleeve. He eyed Sakura's frayed shorts and oversized t-shirt and continued apologetically, "It is the middle of the night, don't you want to go back to bed?"

"It's almost morning anyway," Sakura replied, gesturing at the windows.

"It's like, three." Naruto said, gesturing at Sasuke's wrist watch. contrive

"I'm going to be up in a couple of hours, there's really no point in going back to bed." Sakura explained, "And it's not like I can close the door now. Unless you don't want to?" Sakura waggled her eyebrows at naruto, who promptly insisted that they move the party to his own flat instead.

"It's the least I could do after all this," and he sounded so contrite, that Sakura couldn't help but smile reassuringly and agree.

Now that her heart had stopped trying to break out of her chest, she was starting to feel slight guilt mixed with pride for having brought down what could have been a serial killer with single punch. Maybe she could fix him a little bit. Which obviously had nothing to do with the fact that she'd gotten a good look at her would-be assaulter, and found that his dark hair and pale, sharp features worked very well for her. The only flaw she'd been able to find in his face was the crooked, broken nose, and that had been her own doing. As a doctor, she convinced herself, this went against everything she stood for. First do no harm. Then cover your ass.

Which was why, when Sasuke Uchiha regained consciousness several hours later with a blinding headache and his body hurting all over, he found lying himself on the floor of a strange apartment he had no memory of entering, with a too-soft pillow under his head and an equally soft comforter on his body and a tampon stuffed up his nose.

Everybody loves everybody. Just testing out the waters for myself, really.