blanket disclaimer: I don't own anything anyone else owns. (especially aziz's "dangerously delicious" comedy central skit; I'm borrowing some ideas from him XD)

author's note: soooo, I know that comedy central hasn't been updated recently, but after drowning myself in comedy central goodness and discovering aziz, this is probably the best inspiration I've ever gotten for this story! c; enjoy~

-xxx-

Act 2

I Like Boys, Boys I Do Adore!

-xxx-

"Something's telling me to leave but I won't, 'cause I'm damned if I do ya, damned if I don't!"

Sakura clapped her hands with the mike before she resumed singing. "Oh-oh-oh, how was I supposed to know that you were o-o-over me, I think that I should know? Something's telling me to leave but I won't, 'cause I'm damned if I d-d-d—damned if I do ya, damned if I don't!"

She finished off with a flashy sign, strumming an air guitar before she turned around and laughed.

Naruto and Ino were busting their guts, tears almost streaming down their faces at Sakura's performance while Hinata giggled behind her hand (the little princess she was) and Chouji smiled through a mouthful of potato chips.

"Omigod, Forehead, that was brilliant," Ino choked through her howling tears, clapping her hands together like a broken walrus.

Sakura took a flamboyant bow. "Thank you, thank you—I'll be here on Tuesdays because I'm too tone deaf to be here the rest of the week." Before she sat down, she handed the mike to Chouji (who decided that it would probably be the best idea to sing off the pounds instead of going to the ship's gym) and plopped down beside Ino, knowing all too well that she should probably leave Naruto and Hinata to their little conversation they were starting on the side.

"B-t-dubs, Saks, that skit yesterday," Ino started, twirling a piece of her hair as she smiled and watched Chouji sing. "That actually didn't suck as hard as I thought it would."

Sakura punched her in the arm and grinned sadistically when Ino cried out for mercy. "Shut up, Ino."

"I'm just saying," she said, rubbing her arm, "that it was funny!" Ino leaned towards her, a little smirk hanging from her lips as she waggled her eyebrows. "Who's the sexy angsty, hottie-hot-hottie you were talking about in your skirt yesterday?"

Sakura laughed and shook her head, tut-tutting at her dear beloved Ino. "So that's where you're getting at…"

"Yeah, 'cause you went, 'and he was, like, the sexiest beast in the fucking universe."

"The fucking world, Ino. The fucking world."

Ino rolled her eyes. "Right. So, he's Miss Universe." Before Sakura could fit in her exasperated sigh, Ino rolled right on. "So yeah—I need the story on this hot, mantastical, hunk of junk, fine piece of ass man stat."

Sakura took a sip of her drink. "Well, I was just walking down the hall and then I bumped into him and landed on him weird and he told me 'Ehh, get off of me, bitch'," Sakura said in her best angsty man voice, "and I just got off of him and told him, 'Oh-em-gee, who the fuck do you think you are?' and kind of just stomped off and that was it."

"…"

"Yeah, it was funnier in the skit."

"No kidding."

Ino snapped her fingers. "Oh wait, that's the guy? You mean the one I saw stalking away from you who looked like he could make water boil with his face? That hot guy?"

Sakura nodded slowly. "Yeeeeeeeeessssssssss…?"

"Oh my God, that's Sasuke!"

Sakura blinked. "Wait, what?"

"Sasuke?" Ino repeated to her as if she were a kick-punt-able chihuahua. "You know, Uchiha Sasuke from high school?"

Sakura blinked again.

Ino stared at her. "You don't know who the Uchiha Sasuke was," she repeated flatly. "Holy crap, did you return to the Stone Age while we were still in school or something?"

Sakura stuttered. "B-But he had chicken butt hair," Sakura gestured with her hands, making jagged signs in the air, "a-and the face," she said again, molding an air face with her hands, "and the mantastical"—Sakura slapped her thighs in frustration—"I should've remembered him if we went to the same high school!"

Ino laughed and pinched Sakura's cheeks, squinting at her playfully while Sakura squirmed underneath her grip. "The funny thing is, you're the one who's getting a special high school reunion with him." She released her friend's cheek. "And now he's your source of humorous inspiration."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Sakura said, eyeing another cosmopolitan. How fast would she get drunk if she chugged two alcoholic beverages at a time and attempted to juggle them?

"Hey, I'm just saying," Ino said taking the cherry out of her drink and popping it in her mouth. "If he's your source of inspiration then maybe he's your ticket to keeping your job, you know?"

Sakura chewed on a mint leaf. Huh. Ino was actually right for once. Her face took a rather philosophical-looking turn, her eyes squinting and her eyebrows rose knowingly as she bobbed her head in righteous agreement. "I see what you're getting at."

Ino took the mint leaf out of her friend's mouth, stared at it, and tossed it over her shoulder towards the uncharted territory of the room. "Yeah. You know, just go flirt with him and shit; you both get something."

Ino held both of her hands out in a balancing fashion. She gestured one hand towards Sakura. "You get a hot, tanned and muscular beast of inspiration and you keep your job"—she weighed the other hand—"and he gets a maybe-sort-of-possibly-awesome-ish lay with you." Ino smirked at her. "But I mean, you still get more than he does."

With a swift, half-hearted smack to her friend's face, Sakura shot up from her seat, inspired now. "Welp," she said with a grin as she mock-saluted at her friends and cringed at Naruto singing What is Love, "time to go meet Mr. What's-His-Face!"

"Uchiha Sasuke!" Ino yelled after her before Sakura disappeared down the hall.

.

.

.

Sakura stopped halfway down the hall, panting like hell. She rested her hands on her knees. "God, that was probably a week's worth of exercise," she wheezed.

While she caught her breath, she straightened up and scoped out the deck. "Where the hell do ab-tastical men lurk on a cruise ship anyhow?" She held her hand under her chin and thought for a moment, eying a couple of kids splashing in the kiddie pool nearby.

Think, think, think… she told herself, scanning the deck. Her eyes landed on the buffet and then, she snapped her fingers. "I know! I should eat first and then be open to suggestions later!" Her stomach growled in agreement. She patted it, unknowingly looking a bit like Naruto when he thought of ramen. "There, there," she cooed to her belly. "Soon, you shall have precious French fries within your grasp!"

Dashing towards the buffet line, she grabbed a plate and headed straight for the French fry area. Her mouth watered as she stared at all the selections of fried potato-y goodness: Belgium fries with mayonnaise on the side, potato twisters, cheese fries, chilly cheese fries, McDonald fries, curly fries, fries with a nice, toned, muscular arm holding a pocket watch—

Wait a minute.

Sakura reversed her line of vision and marveled at her luck. Once again, she bumped into him (not literally this time anyway)—and in her favorite place in the world, no less!

Abandoning her craving for fries, she leaned toward him, catching the scent of fresh laundry and an underlying musky, sandalwood scent.

And was that a note of cinnamon she caught?

Goodness, sexy men even smelled sexy.

She watched as he mouthed something to himself as he stared at the face of his pocket watch. Did he need help telling the time or something? Sakura, before she could stop herself, tapped a finger on his shoulder.

He turned his (fiiiiiiiiiiine) self around, his jawline nice and defined and his eyes beautifully dark and mysterious. He raised a questioning eyebrow at her before he realized hey, it's that girl, what does she want

"Um, s'cuse me, but I think that the small hand is the hour hand and the bigger stick is the minute hand, and you count by fives to find out how many minutes have passed."

Sasuke nearly blanched. What.

When he didn't respond to her, Sakura just assumed that he was still having problems. She went to tap on the face of the clock to show him, squeaking in surprise when he pulled his pocket watch away from her reach and snapped it shut before returning it into the pocket of his Bermuda shorts.

She puffed her cheeks out at him. "Jeez, I was only trying to help—"

"It's you again," he said, rolling right over her previous statement like the big (hot, buff, sexayyyy) bulldozer he was.

At his acknowledgement, Sakura beamed at him, glad that someone had a longer short term memory than she did. "Yeah, it's you again, too! And what's more," she said, pointing toward the pocket with the pocket watch, "that's a really cool pocket watch; people don't really have those anymore."

Sasuke stared at her. "Why are you really here?" Seriously, he had better things to do, people to talk to, CEO thingies that needed to be done, and pronto.

She waggled a knowing finger at him. "That's because I finally realized who you are, duh!"

He stared at her. So she finally figured out he was her big, bad Mr. Boss man, huh? He mentally sighed to himself. Now it was time to either face the simpering weirdos or the radical anarchists in this equally strange girl. Slowly, he began planning an escape route, running through the map of the ship in his head—

"You were one of my classmates in high school!"

His eye twitched. "You're kidding."

Sakura blinked at him. "Well, you went to Konohagakure High, right? In Kyoto?"

Sasuke straightened, a bit relieved that he didn't have to deal with either of the worst case scenarios. "Uh… yeah."

A disgruntled French fry lover grunted from behind Sakura. " 'Ey, if youse ain't gonna eat any French fries, get outta da line!"

Sakura turned around and sized him up, pumping her arms at him and cocking her head in his face. "I'm in the line here, buddy!" She grabbed the plate she put down with a bit of sass, shot him a narrow-eyed glare, and proceeded to create a big sampler plate of all the French fries possible. When she was finished, she shot a sheepish grin back to the big man behind her and a quick thank-you before she returned to the man she was previously trying to engage in conversation.

Sasuke's eye twitched when she turned around with her arms full of French fries and still had enough strength to drag him along by the arm to a table.

"So," she said as she sat the both of them down and graciously thanked him for helping her get her plates of fries settled down. "Uchiwa Sousuke, right?"

"Close enough."

A fry was poised by her lips. "Wait, so is it really?"

"Uchiha Sasuke," he corrected, waving it away. "Same thing." He stared at her for a moment. She didn't know that he knew her knew her, because she obviously wasn't aware of the fact that he was her boss, but he definitely remembered seeing her around school at some point. "Haruno Sakura, class 3B?" he guessed.

Sakura laughed. "Wow, you're good! I didn't actually recognize you; a friend of mine recognized you and apparently we happened to be at the same school."

"Aa…" Sasuke tapped a finger on the table. "Is this all you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Well, no," she said, keeping the fries on that delicious plate on hold for a moment so she wouldn't be distracted. "See, this is going to sound kind of weird, but you give me inspiration."

"How so."

"Like, you know how authors write stories, some people write fanfiction, some do doujinshis, others write novels, maybe plays, or film scripts or—"

"Hai."

She squealed internally at how sexy and breathy his Japanese sounded and decided it would be in her best interest to clear her throat. "Uh, yeah, so you give me inspiration for my own work." Sakura picked up another French fry. "So my question is, do you mind if I hang out with you for a bit? My job is on the line and I could really use some inspiration?"

Sasuke stared at her. "How could I possibly help you?" He knew himself not to be quite the talker so there weren't any voluble social hysterics he could cough up and use to inspire her.

"Well, it just happens!" Sakura clasped her hands together, almost as if she were praying to him and put on her best puppy dog eyes. "Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaassssseeeeeeeeee—"

"Okay, shut up already."

Sakura held up a french fry wand. "Yay~!"

Sasuke sighed—i.e., blowing air out of his nose—and rolled his eyes. "I knew you didn't just like my pocket watch."

Her eye twitched. She had almost forgotten his arrogance.

(That totally jerkish jerk, thinking that he was the center of everyone's world, meh.)

Sakura narrowed her eyes at him and sucked in some more fries, watching. Waiting.

Realizing that he might be late for some of his schedule work, Sasuke pulled out his watch to check the time again—

Only to have it be snatched right out of his palm.

Flashing him a big smile, she ran towards the elevator, laughing when she realized that he was chasing after her with the biggest scowl on his face. Pressing the button to the elevator as quickly as she could, she squeezed her way in to the nearest, empty elevator, realizing that Sasuke was close. She frantically hit the close button—

"Hey!"

—but Sasuke managed to squeeze right in between the closing elevator doors and snatched back his pocket watch.

His eye twitched at her. "What the hell, you weirdo."

Sakura grinned sheepishly at him before she rubbed the back of her head. "Didn't I tell you that I really liked your watch?"

Sasuke blinked at her.

And then something magical happened.

One of the corners of his lips lifted up into the tiniest half smirk she had ever seen and he even chuckled a bit. Then, he looked her square in the eye: "That was kind of funny."

She blinked at him. A blush crept across her face; she had to settle for looking anywhere but his face, focusing on how to make that stupid organ in the middle of chest beat slower (man, she knew she shouldn't have left those French fries). After a while, Sakura smiled almost shyly at him. "Thanks."

-xxx-

"So, boys and girls, tonight, I just want to talk to you about why I'm still single."

Cheers erupted from the crowd, men hooting and shouting and stomping in their seats.

Sakura smiled at the crowd and rolled her eyes. "O—Okay now, settle down, the vagina is rather selective you know."

And at that, the men in the crowd proceeded to groan.

"Anyway," Sakura said, carrying on, "apparently I'm a total freak—and not the kind that you'd want, like the ones in bed anyways. Now, I'm sure all of you guys at some point found out that women are absolute psychos, right?"

Everyone in the crowd either protested or cheered her on, crying out amens and the like.

" 'Cause the thing is," Sakura said, "is that we girls go for the dicks." She held a finger out pointedly. "And I don't mean just the dangling male reproductive organs," she said nodding.

Giggles again.

"I mean, come on," Sakura continues, walking around the stage, "we're bat shit crazy; some really huge idiot in the club comes up to us like, 'Hey,'"—at this, Sakura assumed her best bad boy pose and deep manly man douchebag voice before she looked down at her crotch and back up—" 'wanna fuck?'"

The crowd tittered excitedly.

"And us girls, we're like, 'Giggly giggly snort okay,' while we twirl our hair and chew bubblegum and shit.

"And along comes some really sweet-looking dude with a really cute smile, comes along like,

(as she assumed a male voice) 'Hey, my name's—'"

Sakura cut herself off and pointed a vicious finger toward an unseen corridor of the room. She stared out into the audience with wide eyes. "'Get the fuck out of my face."

The audience roared with laughter, applause echoing through the comedy hall.

Sakura, reassuming her boy role, shuffles over towards the other end of the stage. "'Right, okay, I'll just be over here then.'" She made her best what-the-fuck face towards the audience and gave the hugest shoulder shrug of her life. "What the hell, chicks, right?"

The dudes roared again.

"Yeah, so the female gender is probably crazy as fuck; and on that note, let me just tell you, I'm that kind of crazy times however many numbers there are." She held up a finger. "Observe."

Sakura walked toward the front of the stage. "So, this afternoon, my dear friend—who I will call my friend because friends to me are like trampolines." She stared mock-dejectedly at her feet. "I've always wanted a friend."

The crowd laughed and cooed at her.

Sakura laughed along with them. "Ha-ha, anyways! So my dear friend Mr. Angst Man (he'll go by that from now on) and I were at the buffet and this was the first time I'd ever struck up a conversation with him and I go, 'Oh, man, that's one snazzy watch.'

"So he's a hot guy—"

The women in the crowd whooped and cheered.

Sakura smirked. Eyes darting left and right, she leaned close to the mike before she said in a faux baritone voice, "You like that, baby?"

Peals of laughter echoed once again.

"Yeah, so he's a hot guy, so obviously, he goes, 'Ah, you like my watch'"—she sidled close to a young woman in the crowd—" 'a likely story.'"

Tittering crowd commenced again.

"So," Sakura said as she made her way back onstage, "I decided later on that I'd show him that I didn't give two shits about him—and that I really liked his watch."

Sakura smacked her lips and nodded matter-of-fact-ly. "So I stole it."

An eruption of laughter.

Sakura rubbed at her eyes and laughed with them. "Uh, yeah, so, that's why I'm single 'cause I'm a freak and girls are freaks. Looks like my time as a freak show is up though; thank you all so much for coming and I really hope you guys enjoyed, you were awesome!"

.

.

.

Sakura watched as they emptied out of the Marionette Lounge and sipped from her bottle of water before her eye caught sight of a familiar, attractive chicken-butt-haired dude walking out from the bar. She waved frantically at him with both of her arms.

With luck, Sasuke managed to catch sight of the gesticulating female and headed over.

"Didja see me, didja see me?" Sakura asked, bouncing around on the stage as she grinned at him.

"Yes," Sasuke drawled and nearly rolled his eyes, fighting back a smirk from her childish behavior. "It's my job to watch you."

Sakura stopped mid-bounce.

Rewind button, please?

"So, you look at me through binoculars while you sit at that creepy bar corner over there while I do my performances?"

Sasuke jolted. Holy fucks, things could get awkward pretty fast if he didn't clear things up. "Yes," he said, treading carefully. "It's my job to watch you because I'm your boss."

Sakura laughed nervously. "That—That's funny, it almost sounded like you said that you were my—ohhhhhhh, my God, you're the CEO of the Festival Elations cruise lines?"

"… yes."

Her eye twitched and she stared down at his Bermuda shorts and back up to his face. "B-But… the shorts and the—the face," she said, gesturing to his face because CEOs were supposed to be old, old, old and chiseled and fat and stuff, right?

But then again, no other loser would be weird enough to have their pocket watch inside the pocket of their Bermuda shorts.

Sakura squinted. "So, Sasuke…"

He stared at her a bit, wondering why she wasn't "treating" him to sanguine smiles and not using honorary prefixes like she was supposed to (maybe she was just getting too Americanized?).

"… does this mean I get to keep my job?"

The eyebrow went up for him this time.

Oh, well, of course that was what she was getting to.

Sasuke leaned back against the edge of the stage and ran a hand through his hair. "Well, your performances have been gathering some hit ratings recently, so I do suppose that means you do for the time being, or that you get my vote on the board of committees at least."

He held a hand up to stop her squeals. "But your performances can't turn to shit."

"Well, you're my arsenal for inspiration, right?" Sakura said as she leaped in front of him and landed wobbily on her feet. "I just gotta keep you around and then I'll be set for the rest of my career."

A realization hit her then and then she stared at the ground shyly before she clasped her hands together in front of her and played with her entertwined fingers. "That is, if I can…?" she said, looking back up at him with those big puppy dog eyes.

"Sakura—"

"Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssssss ssssssseeeeeeee—"

Sasuke groaned and squeezed the bridge of his nose. "Fuck it all. Okay, fine, whatever," he said again, stopping her mid-happy dance, "Just make it count."

Sakura smirked. "Because you could be off doing CEO thingies?"

"Shut up."

-xxx-

author's note: so I imagine that this multi-fic of mine is going to be rather short with a mild drama on the side, some hot lemons, and, of course, a happy ending, and lots of humor.

anyways, review?