First off, thank you all my nice reviewers who supported me in this story! ^^ It's a bit haphazard and not all planned out like some of my other fics, but I think that lends some cute charm to the story, ne? Anyway, prepare yourselves for a little HidanSaku, SasoSaku, and of course, my fav, ITASAKU (faint hints here and there too ^^) in this chapter! Please wait patiently for following chapters ^^; the authoress is doing her best but college can be quite the hassle.

I know it's supposed to be an ItaSakuDei...but I've got the whole Akatsuki to work with! Can you blame me for throwing in a few other moments? xD

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Kishimoto. Not me. Unfortunately.

And now that that's out of the way, on with the story!

Chapter 2: Hazards

Sakura hadn't realized the night before just how much trouble living alone on the top floor of the dormitory could be.

Actually it's not really the living alone part that's the problem, she corrected herself as she slipped out of the shower and toweled herself dry. It's the walking past everyone else's rooms…

She had made her way down to the bathroom on autopilot, the way she always did early in the morning, and had been halfway through her shower before she'd realized that she'd done what she always did at home and left her clothes in her room.

She hoped her cry of irritation hadn't woken anybody up.

Who was the stupid idiot who gave this dormitory ONE bathroom with a shower huh? It's coed for crying out loud! What if I decided to be a stereotypical girl and take a really long shower every morning, what then?

Actually…I don't think I'd like to try that…they'd probably have no qualms about breaking down the door to the bathroom and…that'd suck.

Her cheeks deepened in color; the fault of her hot shower and all the steam in the room she was sure.

Finally wrapping her slightly damp body in the large forest green towel she'd brought down with her, she surveyed the pajamas she had been wearing distastefully. She had been wearing them for a handful of days; enough that she didn't want to put them on again after she'd gotten all clean. The alternative, though, was walking down the hall and up the stairs to her third-floor room clad in only a towel.

Not a fun thought.

To dress or not to dress, that is the question….

In the end it was the hour that decided the matter.

"How many guys are going to be up at eight on a Thursday morning the week before school starts, Sakura," she assured herself as she gritted her teeth, scooping up her pajamas and opening the bathroom door. "It'll be fine…"

It is so not fine….

She would get someone to fix the second story floors as soon as possible. They had no right to creak with every step of her passage, making her flinch as she made her torturously slow way down the hall. As far as she knew, this squeaky creaky passage of hers was waking every other inhabitant of the dorm….

Zetsu's single on my left, then Hidan and Kakuzu's room on my right…

And then it was Sasori and Deidara's room and Itachi and Kisame's room, and then she would be to the stairs and free. With luck she would be back in her room in five minutes.

She had no such luck.

"…Sakura?"

She whirled around, biting back a scream that would have brought every other guy in the building running, self-preservation kicking in at the last second as she swallowed the yelp.

A somewhat sleepy-eyed teen lounged in the doorway of his room, silvery hair tousled messy from his night.

Hidan.

Oh crap, she thought feelingly, watching with a sinking feeling of apprehension as his eyes focused on her, sweeping from her face to her bare shoulders and down all the way to her ankles before slowly traveling up again. Not good!

"Hey, Hidan," she greeted, deciding to go for casual to diffuse the awkwardness of the situation. "Sorry if I woke you, I'll be going back to my room now…"

The problem with towels, she decided, was that when you were wrapped up in one, there was only so much of you getting covered. If she tugged the bottom hem down so that there was more thigh being concealed, the top hem also migrated downward to show more cleavage and vice versa. It didn't help being caught in such apparel by an eighteen-year-old male high school senior either.

She inched backwards, trying not to appear as though she were running away as her hand groped behind her for the stair railing that she knew had to be close by.

"Good morning, Sakura," the senior said, a devilish smirk touching his attractive features as he sauntered towards her. "You gonna do this every damn morning, seriously?"

"N-no!" she hissed, already warm cheeks growing darker with mingled irritation and embarrassment. "This is a total fluke! Never happening again!"

The predatory smirk grew as he slowly sauntered to her. "Then, I won't let it go to waste. Seriously."

He was a towering warmth against her front, her body separated from his only by the fabric of her towel. Her swiftly unraveling thoughts wondered why guys insisted on sleeping shirtless, and why she had to get caught by this one who exuded masculine satisfaction of the most primal kind, even as his large large hands skimmed over her bare skin to ghost over her waist and he hummed with amusement at her candy-red cheeks as he pressed her back into the wall…

CRASH!

"What the hell, Itachi!" Kisame roared, his furious bellow filling the hall. "Can't you just wake me up like a normal human being if my snoring gets to you?!"

The stentorian cry gave Sakura the moment she needed to slip from his grasp and flee up the stairs and disappear into her room, slamming the door behind her.

She slid down into a seat, curling her arms around her bare legs as Kisame's angry yells of "Don't throw me around next time!" and "What's gotten into you?!" floated up through the floor and she buried her crimson face into her knees.

That'll teach me to forget my clothes in my room here….


"Hey, Sakura."

The girl in question, sitting cross-legged on her bed with her journal opened up on her knee, jerked her head up in surprise. She hadn't been expecting company, and would have expected Kisame, Zetsu, or Deidara if she had. Getting to her feet as she schooled her face not to show her vague apprehension, she pulled the door open.

"Kakuzu? What's up?"

"I'm sorry about Hidan."

She blinked. "Um…sorry?" she asked blankly, feeling slightly disoriented. For a second she had no idea what Kakuzu was talking about, but when her mind kicked into gear, her cheeks flushed a hot scarlet as her eyes skittered away from the other boy's face. "Oh."

"So are you planning on coming down to breakfast?" Kakuzu asked when the silence between them grew awkward.

Sakura shrugged. She wasn't all that hungry and facing Hidan again after the incident earlier that morning was hardly on the top of her list. Maybe I'll grab myself a snack when everyone's out of the kitchen… Sakura groaned inaudibly. She was hardly shaping up to be a good dorm manager if she couldn't face up to her housemates after a single embarrassing episode.

"Only because, if you don't come down, Hidan doesn't get to eat," Kakuzu added nonchalantly.

Her verdant eyes widened.

"What?"

The brunet senior's shoulders quirked in response. "He doesn't get breakfast if you don't come down to join us."

Sakura stared, plainly flummoxed. "I…I still don't understand."

"It's against the rules."

It was like pulling teeth getting an answer from him, and Sakura resisted the urge to just smack the older teen for a straight response. "Are there rules against surprising the dorm manager?" she asked, crossing her arms irritably.

"Kisame made them. Ask him about it. The only part that really matters right now is whether or not you come down to breakfast; if you think Hidan needs to be punished we'll send someone up with your breakfast. If not, just come downstairs."

He fixed her with luminous jade eyes that reminded her of her own. "So, are you coming down or not?"

Sakura returned his look with a serious one of her own, even as she smoothed sweaty palms over her skirt. "Of course I will." I'm not afraid of a challenge.

"Good. Let's go."

With a nod and a perfunctory check of her bedroom, she slipped out after him, closing the door behind her with a rather solid click.

"Tell me," she said after they made their way down the stairs, "what are these rules you guys set up?"

She was surprised when the older male glanced to her and away, the gesture laden with uncertainty.

"We've never had a real dorm manager before, just the snake-scum. Itachi felt we ought to put down some ground rules and Kisame made them up."

"And they include starving someone?" Sakura asked critically, her brows quirked into a small frown.

Kakuzu shrugged noncommittally. "We're only depriving Hidan of one meal, and it could have been worse. We all agreed to let him off easy because we-," he bit off the rest of the sentence as if the words had been unintended, and picked up his pace. "It doesn't matter, hurry up."

"But-,"

"Later," he replied shortly as the sounds of the boys at breakfast drifted through the halls.

"D'you think Sakura'll come down, yeah?" Deidara asked, obviously impatient.

Morning person, Sakura groaned to herself with a small grin, figures.

"Maybe," another, Zetsu it sounded like to Sakura, answered.

"Of course candy-girl will. She's not someone who'd hold a grudge." Kisame's response was so confident when he replied that she couldn't manage to stifle a soft laugh and would have disappeared back upstairs for a joke if only Hidan's breakfast hadn't been on the line. She couldn't even bring herself to be annoyed that he'd used the silly nickname.

"I'm glad someone thinks so well of me," she explained when Kakuzu's eyes flickered to hers at her giggle.

"Well, go in," he said with a twitch of his shoulders.

Wrinkling her nose at the order, she took a calming breath, and pushed open the dining room door.

"Sakura!"

Like a bubble bursting, the somewhat tense feeling in the dining room disappeared as Deidara shot out of his seat to swing her around until Sasori plucked her from his roommate's grasp with a serious glare at the blond to behave. Kisame's face was a picture of sharp-toothed pride, Zetsu, even Itachi, reflecting a certain amount of that same emotion. Hidan…

"You came down."

She glanced up into Sasori's heartbreakingly beautiful face, tearing her eyes away from the strangely quiet Hidan, startled by the quiet surprise in his voice. His expression was curious, violet eyes searching her face for an answer.

"I…I couldn't just let Hidan starve," Sakura mumbled defensively in reply, feeling embarrassed as she explained herself. She tucked a lock of rose-petal hair behind an ear self-consciously. "I was stupid to forget my clothes upstairs."

"You were," he told her, his soft tenor growing harsh with a hint of steel in his tone. "Don't be so stupid again."

She stiffened in confusion as his fingertips brushed a cheek lightly.

"Any of us would be upset if you happened to show such attention to one individual of us alone."

What??

"Sakura."

The hand gently caressing the curve of her jaw dropped away as she jerked back, Itachi's voice breaking the spell of the redhead's words.

"I-Itachi-san?"

"Your breakfast is getting cold," the raven-haired junior told her, his face distant.

Kisame's hand squeezed her shoulder as she sat. "Sakura…."

...Oh!

"Sorry…Itachi…and thanks for reminding me about breakfast," she told him, cheeks flushing as she took a seat at the table. The blush deepened as the other's obsidian eyes warmed.

"Even Hidan can eat today, yeah," Deidara remarked cheerfully as everyone took their seats and dug into the morning meal.

"Yeah, lucky Hidan," Kisame joked, ruffling the girl's hair affectionately. Her cheeks darkened again under his touch.

She nibbled a lip unhappily. "Can we not talk about it?" she pleaded, biting into the corner of her toast.

The tall senior shrugged and nodded. "Well we need to talk about the beach trip anyway."

Sakura perked up, glad for the change of topic. "Beach trip?"

"Every year right before school starts, Akatsuki dorm goes on a beach trip, yeah," Deidara explained from his seat through a mouthful of eggs. "It's really fun, yeah!"

"We leave for a day and a night and come back the next morning," Zetsu added from beside her.

Kakuzu muttered quietly to himself, wincing at a sudden thump of a foot connecting with his shin.

"Train tickets aren't that expensive, seriously." Hidan told him.

The morning meal dissolved into a chaotic discussion of the upcoming trip as the boys each tried to tell her about the hilarious events of previous trips, at the same time.

"So when is this trip?" Sakura asked when she could finally get a word in edgewise.

"Tomorrow," Kisame replied offhandedly, not noticing the quick way Sakura's eyes darted back to her plate to disguise her sudden change of expression.

I guess that means I won't be going…

Her disappointment was surprisingly sharp.

"Sakura."

Kisame last night, Kakuzu this morning, now Itachi?

She untangled herself from her covers, stowing away her book before making it to her door.

"What is it…" her words faded as she took in the sight of him, so casually dressed at her door.

Sakura herself was wearing a vibrant orange shirt that clashed horribly with her hair and proclaimed in dark blue letters "Life's Always Better With RAMEN," a gag birthday gift from her best friend Naruto, and navy pajama pants decorated with a tomato pattern that she had stolen from Sasuke on a camping trip and had never managed to return. In comparison to Itachi, she felt like someone who'd gone dumpster diving for her clothes…in the middle of the night while blindfolded.

The older Uchiha male stood at her door, clothed in only a loose-fitting pair of pajama pants of the same navy shade as her own, a familiar fan emblem printed on one pocket.

Struggling not to let her eyes sweep the smooth line of his shoulders, or the tapering of his waist for that matter, she forced herself to act normal.

"So, what did you want, Itachi?"

"We leave at eight tomorrow morning, there won't be time to pack after you wake up," he said, his quick eyes darting to the interior of her room.

Sakura raised an eyebrow. "Hmmm?" she asked. Brilliantly articulate, Sakura-chan…

"You should pack now."

The words startled her. "What do you mean? I'm not going."

Itachi's reactions were devoid of surprise. He merely shook his head, eyes going to the top of the stairwell leading down to the second floor. "Do you not want to come with us?" he asked instead, stepping towards her.

Sakura's aspen-leaf eyes flickered away from his face to inspect the floorboards. "It's your dorm tradition, I wouldn't want to get in the way," she told the floor softly.

Fingers, far more gentle that she would have expected, tilted her face upwards to the soft gaze of the older male.

"Sakura, it's an Akatsuki dorm tradition," he said patiently. "What dorm do you live in?"

Her jade eyes widened, depths swirling with uncertain understanding. "Akatsuki…."

Itachi's onyx eyes warmed at the word. "Please pack now before bed, we need to leave early to catch our train to the beach."

Pale cheeks darkened with pleasure as Sakura nodded. "I will, thanks Itachi."

He reluctantly lowered his hand from her face as he stepped back to let the girl slip back into her room. "You're welcome."

As Itachi walked away, he hoped that Sakura would pack a different sleeping outfit for their trip. Seeing her wear a bizarre mismatch of his brother, Sasuke, and Sasuke's best friend, Naruto, was strangely irritating.

Hehehe Itachi's being possessive! I love it.

Anyway, the following chapter will hopefully contain an explanation of Kisame's "rules", some of the Akatsuki beach trip, and surfing! Please be looking forward to it and don't forget to review! Reviews are like cookies for the writer's soul ^^

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, I can reply to your reviews and answer them (as long as they don't ask too in depth about the story ^^ I mean what's the fun if you don't wait a little for it right?)! No that wasn't a shameless ploy to get people to review...was it? =P