Author's Note: So...yes. Another chapter of crack. Er...enjoy it? (laughs)

Chapter 2: The Morning After

(in which Sakura wakes up after passing out drunk...and gets a rather unpleasant surprise. Also in which Kabuto accidentally-on-purpose implies that they had angry, drunken hate-sex, even though they didn't. He probably did rifle through her stuff, though; he IS a spy.)

Sakura groaned, her eyelids fluttering. Why did her head feel like someone had set off an explosive tag inside of it? What had she been doing last night...?

Pain meant she was injured. So she should heal herself. Right. That seemed like a good idea, Sakura decided as she tried to cudgel her weary brain into something halfway resembling coherent thought. Gathering her energy, she sat up and opened her eyes.

Gentle sunlight stabbed through them at once, and her stomach protested violently. Doubling over in agony, Sakura retched.

"I told you not to drink so much," came a voice from behind her. Someone was holding back her hair and gently rubbing her back. This set off alarm bells in Sakura's head, but she couldn't quite place why. Her normally sharp mind felt gummed over, it was moving so slowly.

Sakura tried to get up, wanting to see who was behind her--a shinobi knew better than to let any unknown person get behind them, no matter how helpful they were being--and promptly dropped to her knees again, clamping her mouth shut as she tried to keep her stomach in check.

"I wouldn't move around too much if I were you."

Now you tell me, Sakura thought to herself, scowling. She was going to give whoever-it-was a piece of her mind. A very painful piece. Shaped like a fist. Inner Sakura cheered her on gleefully.

Before she could do that, however, her mysterious helper got up to go get something from a rickety table that was propped up with a box of medical supplies. Sakura distinctly remembered finding an inn that wasn't a cesspool of filth, and couldn't understand how she'd ended up in this dump, wherever it was. Or why her bag was sitting on the table alongside someone else's.

"Here, drink this. You'll feel better."

Sakura was about to refuse and punch the man right in the jaw--no shinobi would just drink something handed to her by a stranger--when she caught a flash of silvery hair. Oh. So it was Kakashi-sensei who was helping her. Sakura smiled gratefully and took the cup he offered. She drank a few sips, and her head began to clear a little. With a sigh of relief, Sakura looked up to thank her teacher.

"With all that we medic nins can do, we still haven't found a cure for hangovers," said a silver-haired man who was definitely not Kakashi.

Shit! was about all Sakura's shocked mind could produce as she fumbled for a kunai. Kabuto was at the advantage, though, and smiled at her before turning to throw the window open even wider. Sunlight enveloped the shabby room, and Sakura dropped the kunai in favor of covering her eyes. Why the hell did her head hurt so much!? What had she been doing last night?

"So suspicious!" Kabuto said, smirking. God dammit, she wanted to punch the smirk right off his face, if only her head didn't hurt quite so much and her stomach wasn't still threatening to rebel. "Even after we spent the night together, you still don't trust me..."

"Why the hell would I trust you, you--" Sakura's mind suddenly finished processing what he'd said. "We WHAT!?"

"I probably could have phrased that better," Kabuto said while Sakura frantically checked to make sure she was still wearing all of her clothes. Seeing them safely in place didn't reassure her too much, though.

At her look of wide-eyed horror, Kabuto relented. "Spent the night together as in, I spent the night waiting for you to wake up after you passed out drunk."

Last night...it was starting to come back to her. Suddenly, Sakura was feeling a lot more sympathy for her mentor. Hangovers really were that bad.

"You should drink the rest of that. It'll help," Kabuto said as he checked through his supplies. Sakura had to be getting home herself...not that she felt up to traveling at the moment.

She glanced down at the cup in her hands, then back at Kabuto. It hadn't killed her so far, and whatever hideous organ-melting poison he might be able to come up with couldn't possibly be worse than the pounding in her head. Shrugging, she downed the rest of it and set the cup on the floor beside her.

Sakura looked up when she heard the door open. "So long, Sakura-chan. I paid this time, so you can get the next one, hm?"

"The next time we meet will be when Naruto and I kick your ass and bring Sasuke-kun home," Sakura said, glaring at the medic's retreating back.

"Right," Kabuto said. "Until next time, then."

He shut the door behind him, and Sakura leaned back against the wall. "Bastard," she muttered. There was definitely not going to be a next time, because there shouldn't have even been a this time, and it was completely accidental anyway. And if Sakura had anything to do with it, no one would ever hear about this. Ever.

Groaning, she got up and stretched. Sakura decided she was never getting drunk again; this wasn't worth it. No wonder they called it one of the three sins of the shinobi...

Sakura slowly checked through her pack to make sure everything was still there--it had been left unattended with a spy. Huh. Surprisingly, nothing had been touched...at least as far as she could tell. Deciding to just accept her good fortune, Sakura shouldered the bag and headed down to the first floor of the inn. She supposed she should leave some money--for all she knew Kabuto had skipped out and left her with the bill--even though it was filthy enough that Sakura wanted to take about fifty showers when she got home. Oh well.

It was when she took out her wallet that she realized it was a lot lighter than it should have been. Scowling, she ran out the door, where Kabuto was walking along the street without a care in the world.

"You bastard--you didn't pay!" Sakura shouted after him, shaking her half-emptied wallet. Damn it, if she'd been at full strength she would've punched him into next week.

"I did pay," Kabuto called over his shoulder. "With your money."

"You--you--" Sakura was reduced to inarticulate shrieks of rage as the spy disappeared down a side street.

"Young people these days," Sakura heard a woman say as she passed by. "When I was their age, we didn't have lovers' quarrels out in public where anyone could hear them!"

Sakura clenched her teeth. She wanted so badly to smash something--preferably a large something, perhaps a certain squalid inn--into several billion pieces, just to release the tension. She was trying not to fantasize about punching the woman who had just spoken. Just an innocent bystander. Had no idea what she was saying, or that it was completely impossible. Sakura could think of several thousand reasons why, most of them being 'it's Kabuto'.

But Sakura still wasn't feeling well, and felt she ought to conserve her energy. So she turned around and started for Konoha. There were several long days of travel ahead.

"I'm never drinking again," Sakura muttered.