Sasuke glared at Sakura's bedroom door. Part of him hoped that if he did so long enough, it would catch fire, and his annoying roommate would incinerate and then he would have peace.

She played him like a harp, every single time. She knew he wouldn't let her go to the frat party alone, regardless of how much he wanted to avoid that area of campus tonight. And the worst part was, he couldn't even do anything about it. It was like fighting his own nature; Sakura was a handful, but he couldn't let anything happen to her.

When he explained that to Naruto earlier in the week, his best friend's explanation had been asinine and absurd, as always.

"You like her, asshole!" he'd laughed.

Naruto was so far off-base it wasn't even funny. Sasuke did not like Sakura. He was attracted to her, but that meant nothing. She was very, very pretty, and he'd noticed, but that didn't mean he liked her.

He despised her, mostly. They were friends sometimes, unless she was being particularly ridiculous, but beyond that, he could barely tolerate her. She was flighty, emotional, impulsive. Unpredictable as fuck, and frustratingly naïve. Spontaneous as a motherfucker and full of such irrational anger, he wondered how no one had thought to have her assassinated.

She was also his roommate, unfortunately. And a pretty good cook, even if she didn't eat meat, which meant he didn't eat meat mostly. She'd promised him bacon in the morning, though. And that bitch was going to keep her promise. You don't lie about bacon.

"What's taking so long?" he demanded.

Fucking women. Yet another thing he despised about Sakura Haruno, her numbing preoccupation with her looks. She was already frustratingly beautiful. He didn't understand the appeal of spending so much time in front of a mirror, trying to enhance it.

"Shut the fuck up!" she called back. "Didn't realize you were that eager to go!"

He growled under his breath. He was an Uchiha, damn it. Why did she disrespect him at every turn? So many women would KILL for the chance to so much as speak to him, let alone live with him, and not only did she address him with all the reverence and adoration she would show a feral raccoon, she proceeded to abuse his protective nature and manipulate him into being her bodyguard on a daily basis.

"Just gimme a sec, I'm trying to decide what shoes to wear…"

It was a college party. It wasn't a cotillion. He was dressed appropriately: jeans and a T-shirt. He couldn't understand what was so difficult about putting on jeans and a T-shirt, but it seemed to have Sakura completely stumped.

"Sasuke!" she screeched. "Should I wear pumps or sandals?!"

"I don't care!" he shouted. "Damn it, Sakura!"

"Okay, pumps! Thanks, Sasuke!"

Then, her door opened, and he rounded on her with all the intent in the world of telling her to fuck off and go to the party alone. Until he saw what she was wearing.

The dress, if it could be called that, because it looked more like a cream-colored sock she'd squeezed herself into, was very, very short and very, very tight, defining the perfect figure she sometimes hid behind over-sized sweaters and loose-fitting tank tops. She'd paired it with a very, very tall pair of very, very red heels that made her tall enough to reach his nose. Her hair was curly and wild, and her makeup was very, very dark and concentrated at her eyes, which popped electric green.

Overall, very, very…not happening.

"Go change," he said immediately.

Far from being offended at his dismissive reaction, she smirked, as if pissing him off was exactly what she was going for to begin with.

"Okay, A+ on the outfit," she mused to herself. "I'll show you I'm the "wholesome, wait-till-marriage" type, you judgmental dick. Let's go!"

"Go. Change."

Sasuke prided himself on his self-control, but this was ridiculous. Sakura was dressed like sex on legs, about to head in naïve and unassuming to a frat house. She was turning him on already; he could barely imagine the way the other, less-inhibited guys who saw her tonight would react.

She was going to give him a heart attack.

"Why?" she asked, eyes narrowed, smirk smoldering. "Is it turning you on, Sasuke?"

YES! His mind screamed.

"No," he said, and then a horrible idea came to mind. An evil smirk of his own twisted his lips and he replied with, "But that dress makes you look fat." A bold-faced lie.

The reaction was immediate and predictable. Sakura let out a scream of horror and rage, flinging herself back into her bedroom and slamming the door shut behind her. Not two minutes later, she reemerged, wearing a pair of short shorts, a loose sweater, and boots, covering herself much more effectively than the tiny piece of spandex masquerading as a dress had.

She still looked fucking gorgeous, of course, but at least he would be able to slow his heartrate enough to tolerate the evening.

"Don't think I don't know what you did just there," she hissed up at him, snatching her cell phone and shoving it into her pocket. "That's great, Sasuke. Just great. Give a girl an eating disorder just to get your way. That's fine, though. Because I will poison you, I promise. Let's go before I change my mind about my dress and put it back on and have lots of sex and babies without you."

A heart attack was definitely on the horizon for Sasuke Uchiha. No joke.

The party was…exactly what Sasuke expected it would be.

The Theta house was packed to bursting with drunk college coeds. The lawn was festooned with trash already, and he deduced that they could only have been partying for about an hour to have caused such immediate chaos. Music blared from the open windows and doors, and he glared at Sakura as she pranced inside like she owned the place.

Everyone's reaction to her was completely predictable. The mistrustful stares from jealous girlfriends, as their boyfriends turned around to give her the once-over. And she wondered why she was having such a hard time making friends here of the female variety, strutting around like a peacock and giving every girl a mile around a big reason to feel intimidated. And this was Sakura dressed casually.

What Sasuke hadn't anticipated, however, was everyone's reaction to him.

It was a classic misstep, forgetting his own unfair physical attractiveness, and its appeal to the opposite sex. He'd been so concentrated on keeping everything male ten feet away from his annoyingly pretty roommate that he'd completely forgotten to prepare himself for the same thing.

In an instant, Sakura was separated from him by a gaggle of girls, smelling of cheap perfume and even cheaper liquor, stars in their eyes as they tried to coax him to dance.

As if he would. He ground his teeth together and tried to sidestep them, cursing his good looks not for the first time, but college girls were much more aggressive than the high school girls he was used to avoiding. He couldn't hit them, unfortunately, which meant he had to try and slink around them, because Sakura, looking pissed at him for some reason, had vanished into the kitchen, presumably to find Karin.

This whole thing was completely unfair.

He'd worked hard all fucking week, hadn't he? Studied hard, worked out, avoided rabies, etc. And he had work in the morning, training at a grocery store of all things! Not to mention soccer tryouts were coming up and he had to live with the most frustrating human being ever spawned. ALL HE'D WANTED was an early night in, some food, maybe a baseball game, and sleep.

But no. Thanks to Sakura, he found himself forced into a foul-smelling frat house for the duration of the evening, his only motivation for going in the first place dancing off somewhere he couldn't find her. And now, a band of groupies coiled themselves around him like eight serpents, and he couldn't break free.

"SASUKE?!"

The voice that shouted was painfully familiar, and he grimaced. Years it had been since he'd seen her, but damn if that odious shriek wasn't exactly as horrifying as he remembered.

Sure enough, a redheaded missile catapulted out of the woodwork, darted expertly through the gang of girls like one of those target-locking torpedoes, and flung her arms around his neck.

"YOU'RE HERE!" she screeched.

"Karin," Sasuke choked, trying to pull her off of him. "Damn it, let go of me!"

She pulled back and beamed up at him behind familiar thick black glasses, and Sasuke readed himself for a love confession four years in the making. Despite never feeling anything for Karin besides a reluctant friendship, she never seemed to pick up on the fact that her attraction was decidedly unrequited. He grimaced, preparing himself for the inevitable, when…

"You remember Suigetsu, right?" she said excitedly. "My boyfriend?"

Oh. Well, that was a good thing. She reached behind her and grabbed Suigetsu out of nowhere, who shook Sasuke's hand enthusiastically.

"Hey, man!" he said. "Welcome back! I didn't know you were coming to KU!"

"He's got the hottest roommate!" Karin squealed to Suigetsu, and Sasuke was shocked. Karin's job all throughout school was to flail about him. But it seemed she'd found someone she found even more attractive than she found him, which was ludicrous, because no one on the planet was more attractive than Sasuke Uchiha.

Except, maybe, his nutcase of a roommate.

Suigetsu glared at her. "What'd I fuckin tell you about talking about other guys?" he demanded.

Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"His roommate isn't a guy, dick," Karin hissed like a harpy. "HEY! SAKURA!"

Well, sometimes Karin's volume was good for something; Sasuke couldn't find Sakura through the crowd of people, the loud music and conversation, but not two seconds after she'd screamed did Sakura reappear in front of them, carrying two unopened cans of beer and looking proud of herself.

"Hey!" she said happily, seeing Karin. "I was looking for you. But I found this instead." She held up the beer, handing one over to Sasuke.

"Isn't she like…hot enough to be a movie star?" Karin asked Suigetsu, nudging him with her elbow.

Sasuke found this especially creepy. His middle school stalker seemed to have found a new target to obsess over…and it happened to be his frustrating, female roommate. The beer in his hand suddenly felt like a godsend, and he would have thanked Sakura if it wasn't her fault he was here among this madness in the first place.

"I'll say!" Suigetsu whistled, and Sasuke glared. "What's your name, honey? I'm Suigetsu."

"Sakura," she replied with a smile. "You're Karin's boyfriend?"

"Sure am, when she ain't on my nerves. And you're hooking up with Sasuke, huh?"

She giggled and shook her head, and Sasuke looked to see if she was blushing, but he couldn't tell in the darkness of the room. "Nah, we just live together. Only one apartment left in the entire city, and we had to share it."

"It's destiny!" Karin decreed dreamily. "It was fate that brought the two sexiest people in the universe together, and fate that will force you both to fall in love and get down already!"

The upside to this fucking shitshow, Sasuke reasoned, drinking half the can in one swallow, was that Karin's relative nutassness seemed to have repelled the gang of Sasuke adorers. And that was the only upside. He wanted to go home.

"Sasuke!" another, equally annoying voice shouted. He looked up angrily to see Naruto making his way through the other students, halfway to bombed already and grinning ear to ear. "Thought you weren't coming, dude!"

"Didn't plan on it," Sasuke replied smoothly, glaring at Sakura, who giggled, pleased with herself.

"You look really pretty, Sakura!" Naruto said. To Sasuke's fury, she glowed at the compliment.

"Thanks, Naruto! I had this really awesome dress on earlier, but Sasuke here was kind enough to tell me it made me look fat, so…"

"YOU DON'T TELL A GIRL SHE'S FAT!" roared the combined voices of Naruto, Suigetsu, and Karin.

Sasuke sighed.

He left Sakura to the dubious care of Karin, who was introducing her to some girls she knew from high school, and headed outside at Suigetsu's insistence to check out his new car. Sasuke, a Volkswagen man at heart, was unimpressed with the crisp white Honda parked outside the frat house, but anything was better than being inside the steaming hot, sweat-soaked den of destruction Sakura was so bent on seeing.

Did she have to be so pretty? Really. If she wasn't pretty, then he wouldn't need to devote so much of his time and energy to ensuring that she spent every day safe and unmolested. Not to mention, she wouldn't serve as a constant distraction with her swinging hips and fairy smiles and that incredible-smelling hair. They'd only lived together for a few days. How the hell was he supposed to survive an entire year with someone as frustrating, incomprehensible, and absurdly pretty as Sakura Haruno?

"Fucking gorgeous, right?" Suigetsu asked outside.

He scoffed and responded without thinking. "If you're into pink," he sniffed.

"Uh…dude, the Honda is white…"

Realizing that he'd completely misinterpreted Suigetsu's question, and nearly showed his hand all at once, he downed another beer quickly out of pure frustration.

They'd been there an hour already and Sasuke was running out of patience. He was outside with Suigetsu, Naruto, Shikamaru and Neji, pretending to care about the ugly white Honda just to avoid the pretty pink distraction inside.

No, enough was enough. He'd put an hour into this nonsense, two if you counted the time he spent waiting for Sakura to sexify herself like a video tramp. That was compromise enough; whether she wanted to go or not, she was going. He'd prefer not having to carry her out over his shoulder, but he wasn't above it at the same time.

"Dude, where you going?" Naruto asked, seeing him start back inside.

"To get the girl," he shot back, realizing too late how that sounded. The other guys started snickering, and he felt the back of his neck blaze in anger and embarrassment.

"Not before you take some shots with us!" Naruto said decisively. He dragged Sasuke back to where they were standing by the street, and handed out shotglasses and a bottle of Jaeger.

Sasuke, already having had five or six beers, knew this was a Bad Idea. Beer before liquor makes you sicker, and all that. But he accepted the shot anyway, tossing it back like a champ, and had a few more with the other guys. Enough so that his brain was sufficiently fuzzy, and he knew he'd have an absolutely wretched hangover the next day.

Now fed up, pissed off, AND drunk off his ass, he stomped up the steps to the Theta house and back inside.

This time, it wasn't difficult to find Sakura at all. She seemed to have made friends quickly, not only with Karin but with the other tall girl who'd made the tennis team and a girl with black hair he recognized vaguely as Neji's cousin; all of them were embroiled in a fierce game of pong while pretty much the whole house cheered them on.

He growled and stalked over to her just as she won the game; ignoring the whoops of the frat guys celebrating her victory, he grabbed her arm.

Unexpectedly, her face lit up in a happy, brilliant smile and she exclaimed, "Sasuke! I did it, I won!"

She threw her arms around his neck in joy. He staggered back a bit, his balance already off-kilter thanks to all the Jaeger in his blood. "I won the game and I have girlfriends now. Aren't they pretty? That's Tenten and Hinata and Karin. Karin wants to touch your things. Not, like, your thing," she giggled hysterically, "but your stuff. Belongings. I'm not supposed to tell you or Suigetsu, though."

Sakura was bombed. If he was drunk, she was six or seven sheets to the wind, and it appeared, to his horror, that Sakura was an affectionate drunk. Picturing her throwing herself at every guy in the house, the way he knew she would if he wasn't there, he realized the need to head home was crucial.

"Let's go," he insisted, pulling her away from the game. "You're drunk."

"And you're sexy," she retorted without missing a beat. It caught him off-guard, to say the least; he knew Sakura found him attractive, but to hear her admit it so off the cuff? Maybe it just felt monumental because he was drinking. "Come dance with me!"

"No."

"Sasuke! I wanna dance with somebody I wanna feel the heat with somebody!"

"I said no."

"Fine. Then I'll dance with someone else."

His grip on her arm tightened and he pulled her to him. "You will not. Let's go."

"There you go pretending like you don't fucking wanna dance with me," Sakura giggled. "But I told myself I'd see what you'd do if I danced up on you, so come here." She tugged him with surprising strength towards the middle of the room, where everyone was dancing to some horrible song he'd never heard before.

She was a witch. He knew she had to have been a witch, and she'd cast a spell on him that made him get drunk and act completely out of character. But when she turned around, her back to his chest, and grinded her hips into his…most valuable player?

Any protest he'd been planning to make died in his throat. He stood there, stiff and awkward, eyes wide as she 'danced up on him,' before she grabbed his hands and placed them at her hips.

"Dance WITH me, Sasuke!" she ordered, and to his shock, his hips moved of their own accord, along with hers. Dancing. Sasuke Uchiha, dancing with a college girl at a college party.

How much Jaeger did he have, exactly? Enough to know this was fucking absurd, but not enough to stop it.

Damn if she didn't feel good between his legs, though. She moved like a girl who knew what she was doing, even drunk as she was, which, he could tell, was much, much drunker than him, since she was much, much smaller and much, much lighter. And all this was happening much, much too quickly for him to keep up, and all he could concentrate on was the heat brewing in his stomach and the way his fingers gripped her waist like vices, pulling her back closer.

She stiffened a little, and he wondered if he'd gone too far; then, she turned to face him, red-rimmed eyes wide and glassy in shock and drunkenness, and a disbelieving smile tilted her lips.

"Oh, no," she whispered. "Oh, this is horrible. This is so terribly inconvenient."

What the hell was she babbling about? Sakura often had full conversations with herself, something he found sufficiently creepy on a day-to-day basis, but never had she done so in public. He scoffed and glared at her, but succeeded only in noting how pretty her red-stained lips looked in the dim lights of the party.

Talk about inconvenient. Not even a week under his belt with this pink-haired predator of a roommate and he had the urge to do the unthinkable.

He knew it was the alcohol amplifying his muted desires, knew this wouldn't be an issue if he wasn't drinking, but damn if he didn't want to pull in his nutcase roommate and kiss her.

She was so close. And she wouldn't remember it if he did it, probably. Light little thing like her was bound to have absolutely no tolerance for the stuff in the morning; he could lie, if she asked about it. Say she was dreaming the whole thing and she should only BE so lucky that an eligible Uchiha saw fit to kiss someone like her. He could lie, if she remembered.

As he tried to talk himself into just doing it, just planting one on her pretty lips and seeing if the reality compared to the fantasy, he saw that Sakura was drawing closer, too. And she was still talking to herself.

"Why did this have to happen now?" she asked herself. "Of all the times, of all the people, why now? Why you?"

Definitely creepy, but her hand on his stomach was the farthest thing from. He was a centimeter away from heaven/hell when…

"COPS!"

Sasuke froze; so did Sakura. The only thing scarier than making out with your drunk frenemy roommate who was definitely psychotic was the cops busting a frat party you were at. They were both decidedly underage, and this would have a decidedly horrific consequence on their futures if they were caught, and they would be decidedly KICKED THE FUCK OUT of college, and Sasuke, less drunk than Sakura, sprang into action.

As the crowd of college students moved to the back door in terror, screaming and shouting and shoving their friends out of the way to reach safety first, Sasuke seized Sakura by the wrist.

"Come on!" he snapped, hoping he sounded more like an action hero than a frightened little boy with a squeaky voice. Sakura tried to follow but tripped over her boots and nearly faceplanted on the vomit-soaked carpet, saved at the last second by grabbing Sasuke's arm. "Damn it, you drunk harpy, if you get me arrested I'll have your ass!"

Resenting the fact that every single thing that came out of his mouth lately betrayed his infuriating attraction, he did exactly what he wanted to avoid doing in the first place; flipped Sakura neatly over his shoulder, her ass…ets dizzyingly close to his face, and took off for the back door.

"What are you doing?" she squealed, legs thrashing by his head as she fought to right herself again. "Put me down, you crazed gorilla! Down, I say!"

"You'll only slow me down," he hissed. He kicked open the back door and took off like a shot, just as the police swarmed inside from the front. "Shit, hurry up, Sakura!"

"You're carrying me, how can I hurry up?" she cried.

"You can lose weight!" he snapped meanly, even though she weighed practically nothing.

"MOTHERFUCKER!" she roared, thrashing her legs even harder and nearly sending him sprawling into the bushes. "I'M NOT FAT! YOU'RE FAT, YOU MAD HIPPO!"

"THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!" Sasuke shouted, darting across the backyard towards the wooden fence that separated them from misdemeanor forgiveness. Then, as he felt the glow of a police light on his back, he showed his true colors, and let Sakura drop to the grass in an undignified thump. He couldn't scale the fence with her on his back anyway. Every man for himself.

"HOW COULD YOU?" Sakura howled, as he hauled himself up on top of the fence. "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND, SASUKE UCHIHA!"

"Don't use my name!" he hissed furiously, as the cops started filing into the backyard. Sakura skittered to her feet, loosing a squeal of horror as they closed in on her, and Sasuke felt a stab of guilt. He'd betrayed his roommate, his friend, left her to suffer alone while the sharks descended…even if she fucking deserved it, he couldn't leave anyone to such a fate. He stuck his arm out to her and snapped, "Give me your hand!"

"Stop in the name of the law!" one of the cops ordered.

"I AM THE LAW!" Sakura screamed, seizing Sasuke's hand, and with a great effort, he pulled her up and over the fence; they both landed on the other side on their feet, took one look at each other, and ran hell-for-leather down the street, while the cops struggled to scale the fence in hot pursuit.

Sasuke registered, briefly, that as they ran side by side, zigzagging a drunken pattern towards what he hoped was their apartment, Sakura was laughing. He chanced a glance over at her and saw that the wind was flying through her hair as she pumped her arms and legs fast enough to keep up even with him, the expression on her face was gleeful. She looked like she was having the time of her life.

"What a rush!" she laughed. "Wasn't that awesome?"

Sasuke could have scoffed it off, called her crazy. What kind of moron thought it was fun, risking college expulsion for a few hours of drunken revelry and the clumsiest police chase in the history of the world?

He could have scoffed.

But he was too busy enjoying every fucking second of this madness to even pretend that he didn't.

What wasn't fun came hours later, Sasuke hugging his toilet bowl like a teddy bear, puking his guts out while Sakura held his hair back for him. He couldn't even properly enjoy her soft, warm fingers sifting across his scalp around the deluge of vomit that wouldn't stop coming, and enjoyed it even less when he heard her sympathetic whisper.

"Aw, poor baby. Why didn't you tell me you have no tolerance for alcohol?"

note.. based on how i nearly was kicked out of college when the cops raided a party i was at. my glorious husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, had to save me by pulling me over a fence. and like sasuke, very nearly left me for dead to save his own ass. YOU FIND OUT WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE WHEN THE COPS COME, Y'ALL.

anyway, i hope you liked it, and aren't mad that i didn't have them hook up yet. but hey...this story takes place over the course of a year. what fun would it be if i had them hook up in the first week? :)

xoxoxo let me know what you think, please. i love hearing from you!

daisy :)