The Yamanaka flower shop was family owned and family run. This was often thought of as a good thing when heard, after all, not all families could spend so much quality time together "bonding" and such. It was absolutely charming...unless told from the point of view of a part of said family, a member that just happened to be a teenager. As it was, Yamanaka Ino was diligently walking down the street toward her family's shop, cursing her father for not giving into her shameless pleading and hiring extra help. His reasoning was that "Everyone contributes." Which she heard as "Shut up and do some free labor." What bothered her the most about her situation was that while Ino was wasting away behind a cash register continuously explaining what every little daisy in her shop meant, she could be out happily eating lunch with Uchiha Sasuke while Forehead-Girl turned a lovely shade of green...

...or more likely, huddle outside a restaurant window with Forehead-Girl while watching Sasuke eat...

Speaking of lunch...

Ino stopped for a short moment as she spotted a girl with blue-black hair dart out of an okonomiyaki stand's entryway, three white to-go bags hugged against her chest to keep them warm.

An almost growl crawled up Ino's throat as she watched the girl hurry off in the direction of her shop, and then go beyond it to turn into the empty space separating the one building from the next to it. Hinata hadn't even noticed the shop's owner casting her a belligerent look through the glass door as she passed. When the unhappy stare turned in her direction, Ino resumed her less than enthusiastic pace. The Yamanaka family had been aware of the Geninn team that frequented the area around their shop. When they first started arriving in the ally, the Hyuuga girl had insisted on entering at least on of the residing shops per day and buying some little object -a flower, a book, a candy bar- to justify their presence. However, after the first month of this, the bills had doubtlessly begun to pile up, and the little purchases abruptly stopped. And with the team's presence no longer producing a profit, the shop owners quickly became irritated. But labeling the team as loiterers, or coming out and telling them to leave, was naturally never thought of. Seeing how all three were from fairly respected clans, and one the future head of a the most respected clan, no one particularly wanted to see the team angered.

But that didn't make their daily appearance any more pleasant. As Ino slipped into the flower shop to relieve her mother, the all-too-familiar sound of a dog yipping reached her ears, fallowed by the sound of a girl yelling nervously "Just let him have it, Shino-kun!" Somehow, her mother ignored it with a patience that Ino had failed to inherit. Her pale blue eye twitched.

It wasn't so much the fact that the Geninn team was there eating lunch everyday that made the atmosphere uncomfortable. In fact, Ino's father had actually admitted to feeling more comfortable leaving the shop in her care with the other three rookies nearby. But the complications of who the three ninjas were made their presence a naissance.

A bell hooked about the shop's door jingled as Ino's mother went out to buy their lunches. The sound carried and because a choirs of barking started up a second after, was likely picked up but the two canines nearby. Ino let her head fall forward and pressed her hands over her poor, less than amused ears.

The team also left trash behind to be cleaned up in the evenings by the Yamanakas -namely, Ino. Ino was fairly certain that the garbage wasn't being left by the white-eyed girl, Hinata was just too...Hinata. Meaning that she had one or both of the male team members to blame for her lost evenings, of which she could think of many different ways to have spent. Many involving a set of binoculars and sitting outside Uchiha Sasuke's apartment window.

The team had wisely chosen to make the Hyuuga girl their front man in the area, sending her out to purchase their meals and allowing her to stutter responses to the villagers the few time they were addressed. And as much as Ino hated to admit it, the strategy worked. Who could tell such a timid, sweet girl to shut the HELL up and go away?

The bell above the door jingled again, indicating that someone new had entered the shop. Ino nodded her head in its general direction, but was too busy brooding with her head in her hands to take noticed of any detail about the customer.

"Shino, get those ants outta the food!" came through the wall. Ino's head came up with the tips of Ino's fair eyebrows dipped towards her nose in a glare that might have convinced onlookers that the girl had just developed the Byakugan.

If Shino was a problem in the area, Ino hadn't heard of it. He was for the most part, just guilty by association. If he would only leave his bugs behind once in awhile, he might have been welcomed into the restaurants open in the area.

"KIBA-KUN! DON'T MOVE!"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'DON'T MOVE!' THERE'S A BLOODY BLOOD-SUCKER ON ME-"

"It's just a tick, Kiba."

"GET IT OFF ME!"

"P-Please calm down, Kiba-kun, I'm sure Shino can help!"

"DAA! IT'S GONNA SUCK ME DRY!"

Then there was Kiba...

"OWCH!"

Ino growled as the sound of rabid barking fired into her should-have-been-peaceful shop like bullets. She would have so liked to march outside and help the tick finish the job. Maybe-

"Ino?"

A voice, not belonging to the three outside, cut through Ino's fantasy of a certain dog lover, blood, and ticks, LOTS of ticks, and brought her back to reality. She blinked her eyes to clear them of the horrifyingly delightful images and the glaze that had come over them while she'd been musing. When finished, her attention focused on a tan, scarred face and a pair of bright blue eyes. "Naruto?"

"Hi, Ino!"

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As a former Number One Rookie, it is all but a given that Uchiha Sasuke did not, nor ever will, run from anything. Any one of his fangirl's grandmothers could easily tell a questioner that. However, those people did not see a very disoriented Sasuke jump from the side walk outside the Hokage's office, onto the rooftops and run off for his apartment as if all the slaughtered members of his old clan were out for his blood, just because a certain pink haired girl had tried to talk to him on the street.

Sasuke was deadset on getting home. Not that he was scared and/or running from anything, he simply chose to believe that certain members of the village had caught a virus that drove them to do odd things and had no interest in catching it himself. Thus, Sasuke was planning on going home when the "virus" chose to attack him.

...Just as he happened to pass by the Yamanaka Flower shop.

Another thing that even distant relative of Sasuke-fangirls could easily tell anyone who asked, is that the boy is in possession of godly grace and quick thinking, and that even in a state of alarm, he could never miss a short jump from one building to another...

...Luckily, none of these people were present on this day...

Sasuke fell into the ally beside his teammate's best friend's shop with an incredibly quiet crash. "Thud" might have been the better word for it. As he watched the rooftop that had somehow managed to avoid his feet rise over his head, he dimly noted that gravity really, really was not a ninja's friend.

As if the gods above were bored and decided to entertain themselves by making Sasuke's uncharacteristic mistake known, and also make his humiliation worse in the process, Sasuke landed flat on his back on top of something square shaped and made from unsanded wood. Since the square was only so large, his legs continued falling after his upper body had landed, causing them to smack loudly against the side of what he guess to be a box. That alone wasn't so bad at least, the young ninja thought, but as he pushed himself up into a sitting position he noticed that the surface he had landed on was at least twice his height off the ground. And that it was swaying.

Shit.

He forced himself to remain still atop of the stack of crates that the raven-haired boy had just happen to land on. He raised his head to scan for any possible means of escape, and spotted three head dangerously close below him. Opening his mouth to voice a warning proved to be useless, because almost as quickly as he had registered the people crouched below him, gravity came into effect. His crate was pulled forward off the stack and toward the ground. And also toward the three people.

One shaggy brown haired head shot up, having heard the noise made when he had first landed, Sasuke assumed, and upon noticing that something large and heavy was coming at them at a frightening speed, shrieked and jumped back. A normally navy blue-haired head, made black from the lack of light in the ally, looked up and like her friend, instantly jumped back screaming, "Shino!"

But it was too late. The last of the three Geninn was just in the act of turning his head around when the crate, and Sasuke, crashed down on top of him. Or the crate landed on top of him. Sasuke had gripped onto what he discovered to be the lid of the crate, thus loosening it, and was thrown farther so that he landed directly on something that fell back with a loud "OOF!"

"What the HELL, Uchiha!" Was screamed by the last standing member of the Geninn team. And then, just because the gods of mayhem were not yet finished, a hissing "Pshhh..." sound went off behind Sasuke's back. He couldn't see what it was, but the smell that reached him, and the label on a stray red canister that rolled into the space a few feet from where he sat, made the cause of the sound perfectly clear.

...The crate had held the flower shop's bug spray supply.

...And in the crash, some cans had gone off.

...And the crate had just happened to land on Shino.

Oh, damnit...

At the sound, or perhaps the smell, a loud yipping came from Akamaru and a gasp from Kiba. Both boy and dog dove into the spilled contents of the crate and out of Sasuke's line of vision, in search for their buried teammate. Sasuke assumed that he had been forgotten. He was about to get up, when he discovered that no, the gods STILL were not done with him. He heard a door slam a short distance away.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON OUT HERE!"

Sasuke's eyes focused on his very murderous looking, blonde haired fangirl, a pair of fangs that could rival any the Inuzuka clan or Naruto could produce shining threateningly in her silhouetted form. Sasuke gulped inwardly. Never get a fangirl mad. Even if you are the object of her affection.

Then a second form came running to the mouth of the ally, this on shorter and clad in ridiculous, bright orange. The silhouette ran right passed Ino, shouting, "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING TO HINATA, TEME!"

Briefly Sasuke wondered why so many people were addressing the most beloved resident of Konoha with the H-word before he realized what his position looked like. He shifted in his seat a little, and then frowned. Apparently the object that he had accidentally landed on was a person. If the dobe's statement meant anything, not only was this a person, but it was also Hinata. And because when he fell, he had been holding the crate lid in front of him, it had naturally landed under him. The effect of both left him straddling the female nin's midsection, and to the eyes of anyone who just happened to walk by, smothering the girl with a plank of wood that he was currently pressing down onto with all his weight.

Completely by accident, of course.

Naruto jumped at Sasuke, hitting him straight on because the other boy was still wondering at how he had gotten into his current position, and causing the both of them to fall back onto the pavement. The blonde only needed the crate lid and it would have been exactly the same position that Sasuke had been holding with Hinata. Though from the look on his teammates face, Sasuke supposed that he should have probably been very glad that there were no smothering tool at the other boy's disposal.

"A-Are you alright, Sasuke-kun?" a timid voice said. Both Sasuke and Naruto turned their heads- Sasuke by forcing his body to the side a bit, and Naruto by twisting his head over his shoulder- to look at the newly freed Hinata. The girl's face was imprinted with the grain-patter of the wood that she had just escaped, and her fingers looked as if they could start pressing together out of embarrassment at any time, but the eyes that were trained on the raven-haired nin were filled with nothing but concern.

Unsure if he could be properly seen, Sasuke nodded. The situation seemed surreal to him still. He hadn't even tried to throw the other boy off yet.

"SA…SASUKE-KUN!" a very different toned female voice sounded, fallowed by the pounding of feet on pavement. In seconds Naruto was tackled and Sasuke was supporting a new weight on his lower body. "Are you okay, Sasuke-kun? Do you need me to get a medic-nin? Or a first aid-kit? Or give mouth to mouth?"

Sasuke noted that the fangs were still visible in Ino's mouth when she wasn't growling. Interesting...

"Shino's okay too, by the way," a fourth voice huffed. If Sasuke's head wasn't already against the pavement, he might have tried to roll it so that he could see Kiba northward of him. That would have been better than seeing the blonde on top of him transform back into the fanged demon-girl of doom at the reminder of the dog-boy's presence.

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO SASUKE-KUN!"

There's that word again.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'WHAT DID I DO!' HE JUMPED ON US!"

"LAIR!"

"I AM NOT! ASK HINATA! SHE SAW HIM TOO!"

"SASUKE WOULD NEVER THINK ABOUT SPYING ON A BAND OF LOSERS LIKE YOU!"

"WANNA BET!"
Sasuke listened for what he guess to be about two minutes before his mind started working again- he must have hit his head when he fell. He remembered that there was a devoted fangirl perched on his waist and quickly set about her removal. Using a primary replacement technique, Sasuke left Ino sitting on an overturned trashcan, and started out onto the street to look for Naruto, who had conveniently disappeared just as the yelling started. He told himself that seeking the blonde idiot out was only because he was sure that he would find Hinata with him, and that Hinata being one of the few females in the village that could resist the urge to jump him, chain him, and drag him home to live in her closet for weeks on end (not that that had ever happened, of course), he did not want to risk offending her by not apologizing.

He found them sitting on one of the benches set out for civilians in a nearby park (ninjas would prefer to sit in the trees, or so Sasuke thought was common knowledge). He hopped up onto a tree just far enough so that he wouldn't invade the girl's privacy while she flirted -talked to his teammate, but would still be able to see them easily. Just so that he would be able to catch her quickly after they broke apart and then get home as soon as possible. And if his attention was focused mainly on the brighter colored of the two, it was only because he wanted to make sure that the dobe treated the girl as respectfully as an heir to a great clan should be. No other reason.

From where he was sitting, Sasuke could see that Naruto's face was very close to the girl's and that his hands, forefinger and thumb pinched together, kept touching and leaving her face repeatedly. Leaning forward and squinting his eyes he saw, with a little bit difficulty, that his teammate was also squinting, looking closely at Hinata. But it was so hard to see clearly… Maybe he should move closer...Then Sasuke mentally hit himself for being an idiot before activating his Sharringon. With the enhanced vision, Sasuke could see what Naruto was doing. His fingers where picking at the girl's face because he was helping her remove splinters from the crate. Why this made Sasuke let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding, he couldn't say.

The blonde's task would have been easier if Hinata's face hadn't become boiled-ham red from the closeness of the other ninja, the red making it difficult to tell when Naruto was applying too much pressure to her face. Sasuke could see that the blonde was talking, hurriedly from the movements of his lips. He seemed to be trying to see just how many sentences he could say in one breath. By the time he finally inhaled again, Hinata looked like every drop of blood in her body was concentrated in her face.

Odd.

Naruto leaned away from her a little, and Sasuke noted that his expression became nervous. He started speaking again.

Hinata cut him off, uncharacteristically loud. Sasuke heard a faint, "That's not it!" And silently swore that he would take lip-reading classes at a later date. Hinata started focusing her attention on her fingers, pressing them together nervously. She was speaking as fast as the dobe had, and Sasuke saw that Naruto had to lean in again in order to hear everything. When the girl's mouth stopped moving, she looked up at the blonde through her bangs.

Naruto had started smiling.

Hinata smiled back.

Sasuke noted before a "REALLY!" loud enough for him to hear perfectly from his tree branch, that the girl had a very pretty smile.

And Naruto had an absolutely stunning one.

His breathing hitched.

Hinata likes you...

The girl's hair bobbed around her head as she nodded in response to Naruto's shout, her smile flourishing on her face.

Sasuke felt his whole body go lax against the tree trunk, suddenly grateful that it was there. His eyes stung from too much time spent without blinking, but Sasuke found that he couldn't control them at the moment.

...likes you...

Hinata seemed to become aware of the closeness of their faces at once. She started to turn away embarrassedly, but found Naruto's hands on either side of her face. Nowhere else to go, her eyes locked on Naruto's.

Naruto grinned foxily as he leaned in gently, half-lidded eyes on the alert for any signs of distress as his mouth came closer to the girl's, then...

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Sasuke rolled over on his bed again. His alarm clock read 5:45. He had managed to lay restlessly for a total of fifteen minutes. He peered about the frighteningly neat room with blurry eyes. Blurry, he told himself, from the pressure of his arm trying to bloke out the light. To fix this problem, Sasuke got up from bed and walked over to the switch by the door. He looked around on the floor one last time to make sure there was nothing to trip him on his way back to bed, knowing that he was stalling, and then turned the lights off. Darkness filled his windowless room. Only the steady red glow of his alarm clocks numbers pierced it.

He went back to bed to continue his pretence of sleep.

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A/N:

Fallowing up with what I promised, this chapter was re-edited too! And I'm happy to say that there were only half the mistakes of the first present! Woot! Go me!

I hope this chapter was enjoyed as much as the first one, and that anyone who has any suggestions or corrections for me wont hesitate to let me know in a review.