Set towards the end of The Color Blue.

4. Frustrated

Sasuke was endlessly frustrated. Kakashi irked him with his laziness. Naruto chafed him with his attitude and constantly growing strength. Itachi made him fume and train and, sometimes, do things that he would later regret.

He wasn't sure what it was about Sakura that frustrated him.

He could say it was her attitude, but she really was different than the fan girls who would stalk him around the village with gooey doe eyes. She was assertive, calm under duress, and sometimes, just the perfect mix of tomboy to offset her pink hair. He could say it was her strength, but he didn't think she was a weakling, holding him back, or even someone whose strength made him ache to fight. He could say it was the fact that she was a girl, but that didn't make any sort of sense at all, because Sasuke was decidedly asexual.

So, perhaps that he couldn't decide what frustrated him about her was part of the frustration.

It didn't make a lot of sense, really, but what about Uchiha Sasuke did?

He walked down the dirt road with these thoughts on his mind, increasing his agitation. The buzzing, anxious feeling increased when he spotted Sakura walking towards him on her way into town. He frowned when her eyes lit up and a smile crossed her face and he tried to shove down the humming feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was so different from the sharp aggravation he felt around the others, and it unnerved him.

"Good morning," she chirped at him, rocking back on her heels. Her strange, teal eyes were liquid in the morning sunlight. "How are you, today?"

"Frustrated," he grunted, shoving his hands into his deep pockets. He watched the frown pull at her lips and he snorted.

"Well, that's hardly new, is it?" She chuckled then, and stepped forward, lifting her cool palm to his forehead, knocking his bangs out of his eyes. "I'm surprised you noticed, really. Do you have a fever?"

Sasuke jerked in surprise as her cool fingers pressed against his flesh. It was a strange feeling, one that put him in mind of his mother's gentle fingers, of his brother's teasing pokes. He watched Sakura's concerned face hovering in his vision as she checked his temperature, and something clicked strangely into place.

"I like you." The words blurted out of his mouth, strange echoes of Naruto's love declaration to the girl so long ago. It made him wince, but he watched her face raptly all the same.

Sakura had gone pale in surprise, her eyes wide and unfocused. "What?"

"I like you."

And then his lips were over hers, clumsy and tactless and probably too hard, likely to bruise her. It didn't seem to matter, because she was too frozen and surprised to notice, although when he tried to pull away, she caught him in her demonic vice grip and pulled him back hard enough that she'd definitely bruised him.

When it came down to it, Sasuke was eternally frustrated.

But he was just realizing that some of it was his fault.