March – Week 1 (Part I)

"Hey, Hinata-chan," Sakura whispered, knocking gingerly on the raven-haired girl's door. She twisted on the knob and opened the door a crack. "Are you awake?"

Inside, the Hyuuga stirred in her bed and rubbed her eyes gently. She stepped into her slippers and slinked into a robe before meeting Sakura at her doorway.

"What is it, Sakura-chan? Is everything alright?"

Sakura smiled briefly, "Yeah, of course. I just need a little favor from you and it has to do with Naruto."

Hinata's heart skipped and she tightened her robe. "What makes you think he's here?" she asked quickly, eyes wide in frenzy.

She knew Naruto snored too loudly to spend the night. She knew it!

Sakura's brows furrowed. "I didn't?" she replied, confused. She had half a mind to check over Hinata's shoulder to see if she had any aforementioned company, but decided that prying wasn't worth the inevitable fainting spell. Instead, she explained, "Sasuke drove me home from work and he told me to text him when I got in. I realized I don't have his number, though, so I was hoping you could just let Naruto know in the morning for me..."

All of the red left Hinata's face in relief and she exhaled. "Oh, of course," she answered. "Is that all?"

"Mmhm," Sakura replied. "Sleep tight, Hina-Bina."

"Night night, Socky-chan."

hotline bling

Wednesday mornings were usually rough for Sakura, but this morning was particularly tough because of how late she'd stayed up the night before worried about Sasuke. She had to start being more serious about refraining from developing a relationship outside of therapy with him. At this point, it was now or never and, for some reason, staying away had been and still was proving to be more difficult than Sakura would care to admit. Nevertheless, it was a recipe for disaster if she kept making up any and all the necessary excuses, rationalizations, and justifications she needed just to share space with the man – his surprise trip to her apartment was proof enough of that. As much as she wished there was another way, it was too late to switch clients and she had stuck herself epically into an ethical bind.

"I have no other choice," she moaned to herself as she slinked into her seat for Kurenai's lecture, certain she looked every part like the zombie that she felt like.

"Jesus," Kiba breathed. "You look like shit," he frowned and backed away from Sakura in shock. The rosette groaned and melted further into her chair, pressing her cheek to the cool tile of the attached desk. Normally, she'd had some witty retort for the Inuzuka each class period, but today was not the day. Sensing the seriousness of Sakura's exhaustion, Kiba relaxed and placed a supportive hand on her back, rubbing gently.

He asked, "Something going on, Sak?"

Sakura inhaled deeply. How, oh, how was she to explain that her long-buried, completely unfounded crush on someone she knew absolutely nothing about was being very violently reignited now that she was, in fact, getting to know him very intimately? And, on top of that, the only reason why he trusted her enough to let her in in this intimate way was because she was his anonymous counselor? Or, perhaps even worse, that the reason why she was so stressed now was because she sucked ass at maintaining boundaries and controlling herself well enough not to make her own situation worse for herself by insisting on taking every opportunity she had to flirt with fire instead of being freakin' honest?

She exhaled slowly and met Kiba's curious, non-judgemental eyes. "You can tell me," he encouraged while switching his back rubs to gentle pats. He grinned warmly and joked, "Your boy is a fortress. Lips. Sealed."

Maybe she could just tell him a little bit of what was going on. They were friends, after all, and maybe he had stressors with his project, too. Hopefully, they were a little different than hers, but...

"I–" Sakura started.

The clock struck 9:00 am and Kurenai startly aptly. "Alright, everyone," she announced. Kurenai's eyes seemed to zero in on Sakura, making the rosette smile apologetically at Kiba, turn away from him, and sink slightly into her seat, as she continued, "Thank you so much for being on time to class today. We have a lot to do and will be focusing on wrapping up those conceptualizations, so let's take out our laptops and log on to our groupwork servers, yes?"

"Hai, sensei," Sakura, Kiba, and the rest of their classmates emptily replied and began shifting to grab their computers. Perhaps Sakura could tell Kiba later, but for now, she was glad that Kurenai snapped her out of her near-admission and into good enough shape to focus on the task at hand.

She could get through this. Plus, all of her stress would be a thing of the past by time the weekend came around. March 1st was right around the corner, and that meant the biggest unofficial school holiday of the year was, too.

A party would do her good.

"I thought you wanted this, Forehead!" Ino complained, nearly burning Sakura with her curling iron thanks to how dramatically she swung her arms out. "Wednesday, did you or did you not barge into my quiet home, totally interrupting Riverdale, may I add, to demand that we host an A-Day party?"

Sakura threw her head back and gargled, hissing slightly at the feel of the antiseptic burning the bridge of her nose before spitting into one of the two vanity sinks that belonged to her. "I'm just not sure," she said in between flossing and inspecting her teeth for cleanliness. "Do we have to be the ones hosting, y'know? Is it too late to–"

Ino scoffed and put down her curling iron. "Yes," she bit. "A-Day is today, Forehead. Invites have been sent. Liquor has been purchased." The blonde shook her head, "I knew you were gonna get cold feet, bro."

Sakura leveled Ino with a side eye for several seconds before muttering, "I know what day it is, bro." She stuffed her toothbrush in her mouth, scrubbed with vigor, and quipped through the foam, "You're gonna burn down the goddamn apartment before the freakin party anyways."

"I don't know what you're…" the smell of smoke coming from the blonde's iron reached her nostrils that moment and she shrieked, flushing red. Ino looked up at her and her best friend's reflections in embarrassment and huffed at Sakura's smug smirk of satisfaction. "Whatever," she bemoaned, flicking the hair tool off and unplugging it. Ino bit the inside of her cheek and considered her retort. Decisively, she teased, and reached to poke Sakura on the butt before running out of the bathroom, "You're just pissy because Sasuke-kun is coming and you 'found the strength within' to avoid him all last week. T'uh. We'll see how well that stands up now, won't we?"

Sakura jerked away from Ino's poking finger and spit into the sink again, growling.

"Take that back, you pig!" she cried, chasing after her with a fist.

Naruto expertly flicked his wrist and watched in genuine wonder as two greasy, sizzling pieces of bacon flipped in the air and landed back in his pan. The sounds and smells of breakfast filled his and Sasuke's apartment in the early hours. Amongst these noises was the cheery melody of Naruto's whistling and the hellish groans of Sasuke, the resident raincloud dampening the mood that Naruto was trying to set in celebration.

"Come on, teme," Naruto egged. "This is the first time we get to actually partake in A-Day and we're seniors. Our season is going great. We just! Beat! Suna! And on their turf at that. Seriously. We basically have no choice but to get wasted!"

Sasuke narrowed his eyes, "I'm awake, aren't I, deadlast?"

"Yeah but it's no fun when you're the living dead, Sasuke," Naruto laughed. He put together two full plates of eggs, toast, and bacon and balanced them over to the table. Sasuke lifted his head and straightened slightly to take his serving. While he carefully spread butter and jam over his bread, he couldn't help the trace amounts of disgust sinking into him from watching Naruto truck his food into his mouth. None the wiser, or perhaps well adjusted to, Sasuke's silent judgements, Naruto sloshed orange juice into the mix and continued to gobble down. "Eat like you mean it," the blond urged and reminded, "We're running late to Ino-chan's, and I told Hinata that we'd help set up so we gotta get a move on."

"Not that I care, but;" He proceeded to care. "What's going on with you two?"

Naruto stopped dangling his bacon in front of him midair and asked back, clueless, "Me and Ino?"

"The one with the eyes."

"Oh, Hinata. Don't be mean, Sasuke; they all have eyes. What eeyyyyeee," Naruto sang, dancing briefly in his chair to Sasuke's disdain, "wanna know is what's up with you and that girl from last Tuesday night."

Sasuke scrunched his face dramatically. "What girl from last Tuesday night?"

"Don't lie to me, Uchiha. I count my fruit snacks – one was definitely missing and you only give those to girls." Naruto giggled, "I bet it's the same chick from the phone a couple weeks ago. So, when'd you sneak her out? I missed that–"

"Shut up, deadlast. It's not like that."

Sasuke folded his hands under his nose and covered his growing blush as he chewed and glared into his emptying plate. He was determined to ignore Naruto for however long it took for the idiot to let it go. The fact that it was not like that got underneath Sasuke's skin in ways he was beyond unfamiliar with. All that he had done over the past couple weeks to try and catch Sakura up was a complete waste of time and he had failed because he was, undoubtedly, wrong. Him.

Wrong.

He couldn't believe it.

And he didn't know what was worse – that he was developing a crush on his anonymous counselor or that his brain (and, even more annoyingly, his body) wanted so badly for this mysterious voice to be his neighbor that he'd convinced himself to believe it to be true. And based on what?

A similar sounding voice?

A cute face?

He shuddered as he felt Naruto hovering closer to him in his peripheral, still insisting on an answer. Neither of those reasonings was even close to enough. "Let it go, dobe," Sasuke muttered. "Sakura and I are just friends. I gave her a ride home – that's all."

Naruto deflated. "Oh, duh, I shoulda known," he dismissed. "Sakura-chan would never go for you, anyways. She's way too focused on school, you know."

"Right," Sasuke agreed unconvincingly.

"But anyways. What are you wearing to the party?"

The Uchiha sighed. Back to that.

"Black, probably," he answered.

Naruto balked, "Nooooo, teme. No. No," he waved and crossed his arms in vague 'X' shapes. Sasuke rolled his eyes while Naruto continued, "I simply won't allow it, Uchiha. You have to have something in your closet that isn't Hot Topic circa '08."

Sasuke glared. "What…," he started. Then, he shook his head and tore a piece of meat into his mouth. He actually couldn't care less about what Naruto meant by that. He brushed his hands on a nearby napkin and properly responded. "I don't have any green, if that's what you're asking," he said simply. "Even if I did, Coach was clear– supporting shitfest holidays will lead to nothing short of your dumb loaf ass being grass on my bench for as long as I want."

"–supporting shitfest holidays will lead to nothing short of your dumb loaf ass being grass on my bench for as long as I want," Naruto mimicked Kakashi word-for-word with Sasuke, annoyed. "Yeah, yeah, I know what Dr. Seuss said," the blond moaned.

"Exactly," the Uchiha emphasized. He caught Naruto's eye with a glint that only took the blond a few seconds to register. Then a large smile split the Uzumaki's lips. Sasuke smirked back and pointed, standing from the table, "That's why we don't get caught."

Naruto hooted, rocketing from the chair, "Woo-hoo! That's what I'm talking about, Sasuke-teme!"

Sasuke shook his head and laughed to himself. What an idiot.

The party was at full speed by 8:00 am, and it would be an A-Day for the history books.

A/N: Hello all! Thanks so much for all of the support in the last chapter and I look forward to what's coming next. The story is well on its way to more and more exciting bits so stay tuned :)

For those who are wondering about A-Day! The day is a fictional holiday modeled after something that occurs at my undergraduate institution that is basically an unofficial celebration of St. Patrick's Day. Honestly, the entire setting is based on my undergrad haha, so if anyone out there happened to go to or still goes to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US, feel free to envision locations as the ones in Chambana. A – one of the former Raikage – has a birthday on March 1, so I thought it would be cool to have college kids everywhere celebrate with copious amounts of alcohol. Why?

Because we love alcohol-induced shenanigans!

Let me know in the comments if there are any mishaps you hope to see, think are coming up, or any reactions you have to this chapter overall!

See you next time,

~hot