A/N: ...Better late than never?...

Sunday morning dawned with no alarm clock blaring, no insistent messenger at the door bearing news of some appointment; and most remarkably no overarching sense of panic tided over from the night before. In fact morning came and went without any hassle at all – at least as far as Sakura was concerned, for she missed it altogether. By the time she opened her eyes the sun hung low within the window frame, signaling that it was well past noon, but for once she didn't care that she'd woken up late. She had finally slept, and that was all that mattered.

Her reflection bore some signs of the previous night's catharsis, but puffy eyes she could conceal with ease. Even the marks on her neck had finally faded enough that cover-up alone erased them. Things were looking up at last, she thought as she appraised herself in the mirror. Time heals all wounds, after all. Or so she hoped.

Although a knot of apprehension still resided in her stomach, that she felt even a glint of optimism gave her enormous comfort. Her long-impending breakdown of the night before hadn't exactly fixed all that was broken about her - but it had certainly helped. Months and years of bottled up emotions had finally broken from their confines and flowed free like roaring waters bursting through a dam. While she had feared their release lest she drown in the torrent, somehow, amazingly, she had not. She was still standing, not because she'd maintained some paradigm of composure, but because she'd forsaken it entirely and weathered the floods. She felt reborn, evolved - yet somehow even more herself, like she'd reclaimed her former strength and even a pinch of innocence, the kind that lends to faith.

The fact that she could even think the word "hope," a concept that had seemed estranged from her for so long, felt like progress, and while she had not eradicated all her fears, at least she felt equipped to confront them. On her desk, the armor she had forged for battle: the song.

She could hardly believe it had come from her. Tears she'd produced before, but a song? (Or, at the very least, some semi-cohesive prose that with a constructive eye and melody could become a song.) And one had felt just as cathartic as the other. To hold in her hands some summation of her struggle instilled in her a sense of power unlike she'd ever experienced. It was as if she'd removed the sentiment from within herself, turned it into something tangible. Once extricated, it didn't seem quite so catastrophic as before. Yes, her troubles persisted, her feelings about Sasuke far from resolved; but in a way, they only amounted to a few lines of script on a piece of paper. What was so intimidating about that?

Naruto must have come to this realization ages ago, she mused. His lyrics (if indeed they were his and not another band member's) betrayed an alarming angst, so palpable when he sang it couldn't be contrived. Yet the second the show was over he'd emerged smiling, his usual convivial self. He had found a way to transfigure his grief into something else, into music that in turn invited others to scream and dance and thrash the pain away, at least for three minutes' time. Looking at him you'd never know what beasts he bore within him - literally and figuratively.

Tucking her notebook into her work satchel, Sakura had a horrible thought; a shady premonition of a show, of Naruto belting his lungs out about a shallow, selfish bitch who'd had sex with a guy then snubbed him, too callow and cowardly to address her own transgressions. He could immortalize her shittiness in song so easily, if he hadn't already written one, and judging by his first show's success, it wouldn't be long before all of the Hidden Villages were rocking out to her defamation.

Honestly, she probably had it coming. If such a thing would return them to almost-normal, she could find a way to live with it. What she feared more than the potential infamy, what made her sick to her stomach to think about, was the very notion of inspiring the type of song she had just written. The kind that had her sobbing on the floor of her apartment before she penned it, bleeding her pain onto the page like one drains poison from a wound. She couldn't be to Naruto what Sasuke had been to her. She would never let that happen.

It was this determination that guided her across town to the Inuzuka's modest estate, pushed her over the threshold and into a house suspiciously devoid of people. Only Akamaru greeted her, tail wagging in welcome of a familiar face. Knocking was not much of a thing at Kiba's place, the presence of several dogs the size of ponies forgoing the need for locks, but in this instance it felt a bit like breaking and entering. Sakura's previous zen suffered a ripple of anxiety and then another as a barrage of possibilities filled her head. Had she missed rehearsal? Naruto had neglected to specify a time, and she had been too awkward to ask. Worse, had he intentionally misdirected her, luring her in to be devoured by dogs (or not, as it turned out) as she had spited him so? But the worst thought to occur to her was that maybe he had bailed, decided that inviting her was a huge mistake. He didn't want to see her after all. Couldn't.

Her heart sank, and, perhaps sensing her distress, Akamaru came to circle her heels. She reached to pet him but could only graze his tail as he swiftly beelined down the hall. Even the dog was rejecting her, she thought - until he paused to look back at her and barked.

He was herding her.

"Where are they, boy?"

She followed him to the back of the house, to what she guessed must be the basement door. Sure enough the sound of drums carried faintly from beyond. They were here. He was here. He hadn't tricked her. She still had the chance to make amends.

With a deep breath that filled her more with pet dander than confidence, she opened the door - and instantly she was besieged by a din of overdrive and a voice she knew all too well. It was so loud it was as if the sound filled not just her ears but every part of her, coursing through her veins like adrenaline forcing her heart to thump to the percussion. Maybe it was just the acoustics of a smaller space, but this song seemed...different; harder than what they'd played at Rock Bar, rougher around the edges. Naruto was basically screaming, and though he was out of view she could envision his reddened face, spit flying, veins bulging in his neck. Suddenly she feared that the words she'd written would prove too soft, feminine; trite compared with what he sang now with such a furious intensity it nearly knocked her on her ass. Even Akamaru had fled to seek sanctuary from the noise.

It wasn't too late to turn back. There was no way they had heard her entrance over their racket. She could tuck tail and run and no one would ever know about the feeble excuse of a song she had written to try and win back her friend's favor.

But then she would surely lose said friend, and whether he ever proclaimed it in a song or not, she would indeed be a coward.

In the roar of the amps Sakura's descent truly felt like stepping into the proverbial lion's den, but before she knew it she was at the bottom of the steps, frozen there by a force apart from fear. For a moment she forgot her nervousness, her guilt, her everything. All her senses trained on the scene before her. For a split second she was back at Rock Bar, blind to the crowd, ignorant of her own actions, completely immersed in the music as if it were the only thing in the world.

The boys seemed equally engrossed in playing, such that no one noticed her arrival. Shikamaru, planted in Kiba's line of sight, had his eyes glued to his counterpart's guitar, picking his bass with calculated dexterity. Across from him, singing into the side of the mic to face his cohorts, was Naruto, grinning from ear to ear as he strummed and belted away. There he was, the dichotomy in the flesh, singing about recklessness and resignation with a smile on his face. Which part of him was real? Or, if both, which part outweighed the other?

Naruto had always managed to surprise Sakura, but never before had he made her so confused. Her head swam with all the fears and doubts she'd briefly shirked, compounded with a new, incredulous curiosity. Through her muddle of emotions one thought shone crystal clear beyond her capacity to deny it: Naruto looked good. Really good. Even without the stage lights and the contagious enthusiasm of an audience she found herself transfixed.

Before this feverish realization could fully drench her face in red, a sharp discord derailed the end of the song, causing the whole group to grimace. The singer had turned to deliver a final utterance and faltered as he beheld their guest.

"S-Sakura!" Naruto stammered into the mic, filling the room with her name and breaking her trance like a splash of ice water to the face. If she wasn't blushing before, she certainly was now. Why hadn't she announced herself instead of standing there like a timid fangirl?

"H-hi. Sorry to interrupt," she managed, her voice sounding pathetically hushed to her ringing ears.

"No worries. We were just wrapping up," Kiba said, smashing his cymbals in finality and letting the sticks fly from his hands as he stood.

Wrapping up? So she had arrived too late. Her mind raced to find some way to prolong their stay.

"But - don't I get to hear what you're working on?" she fumbled, grasping at straws. Maybe appealing to their egos as performers would do the trick. "I'd love to hear more. To know what I'm up against." She forced a smirk that she hoped offset the desperation in her eyes.

"Would. Can't," Kiba shrugged, retrieving his jacket from the ground next to his set. "I've got training."

"And I've got mission prep," Shikamaru said, tucking his bass safely into its case. "Besides, maestro over here doesn't want you to be influenced by our 'sound' while you write," he added, jerking his head at his bandmate, who remained petrified before the buzzing mic, guitar still in hand. So much for supervision, she thought, heart thudding poignantly as she questioned his intentions for their privacy.

"Don't be nervous," Kiba said, half-jokingly, placing a hand on her shoulder. "He's still just your teammate. No need to feel any pressure." Sakura could only blink at the irony of this statement. She could almost hear the universe laughing at her expense.

"But for real, put a shirt on, dude. There's a lady present."

With this final jest they were gone, and she was alone in a room with Naruto, the very situation that despite all the terror she'd faced as a ninja had become her greatest fear. Without social buffers her plan to re-establish a casual camaraderie was splintering, crushed by the weight of what had happened the last time they were alone together. He had her cornered. There was nowhere to run if he should ask her to explain herself, and she still had no idea how.

"S-sorry," he said, at last removing his instrument and untying his shirt from his waist. Of course, in the cosmic comedy that had become her life, he just had to be shirtless. As if she needed reminding that she'd seen him pantless too.

"It's...fine," she hazarded, looking away as he dressed - and feeling ridiculous for doing so. She'd seen him shirtless hundreds of times, even stripped down to boxers as she'd healed him. Only now that they had porked was it suddenly taboo, like everything else between them that used to be simple.

"So," began her now-clothed counterpart, keeping a safe distance across the room; "how do you wanna do this?"

For a second she'd forgotten the whole pretense of their meeting, and her mind drifted elsewhere. The music, God dammit. Focus.

Shaking her head of the perverse thought, she countered, "Aren't you the expert?"

"Hardly," he scoffed. "I mean, I know what works for me in songwriting, but it's different for everybody. And I'm not that good myself."

Immediately she wanted to chastise him for his modesty, but is that what Old Sakura would do, the one who hadn't slept with him? Even if it was it didn't seem to matter. Now everything she could think to say seemed loaded with implications and hidden meaning. She didn't want to lead him on.

"Shut up," she said. That seemed safe. Neither overly flattering nor belittling. She would have to strive for that innocuous middle ground. "So what do you do?" she asked, genuinely curious. In an effort to relax she set her bag down and perched on the arm of the lone couch the space contained.

"Well," Naruto said, busying himself with gathering cables around his arm, "it depends. I either have a tune I've picked out or some lyrics, and I just try to make one match the other." He stooped to adjust the settings on his amp, turning dials and pressing buttons Sakura didn't even begin to understand. "Then I bring it to the guys and they help me flesh it out."

He shouldered his guitar again, tuning it with a few deft turns of the pegs.

Sakura couldn't bite back the question that had haunted her since the show, since she'd first heard him sing. "Do you write all the songs, then?"

For what seemed like a straightforward question, he seemed hesitant to answer. Finally, he shrugged. "Kind of, I guess. They write their own parts. We all make edits and change things up." He knelt again before the amp, strumming and adjusting until his guitar sounded muddled, grittier than before. "I might write the words and stuff, but it doesn't really become a song until you get all these instruments behind it."

Satisfied with his sound, he stood, gesturing to her.

"You ready?"

She swallowed. "Ready for what?" she asked, although she felt sure no matter what it was her answer would be no.

"To sing," he said, turning the mic to face her.

"Sing...what? We don't have a song yet," she said, willfully ignoring the poor pad of paper she'd schlepped all this way for naught, too embarrassed to produce it.

"True," Naruto remarked, a sly smile creeping over his face. "But I know one you know."

Before she could further protest he started playing, and from the first riff she knew he had her. It was "Bad Reputation," the song from her famed karaoke performance. Of course he had learned to play it.

Stalling, she said, "I wouldn't have taken you for a Joan Jett fan."

"Are you kidding me? She's badass," he yelled over his guitar. He kept playing the opening riff over and over until, sighing, Sakura approached the mic. Clearly there was no way out of this. She had to bite the bullet.

The first line felt blasphemously weak for what the lyrics entailed as she fumbled for the key and rhythm. It was different singing with live music instead of a pre-recorded song, and just guitar at that. The sound of her voice in the empty room made her cheeks burn, and she kept her eyes fixed on the ground, the wall, anything but her accompanist, the soul witness to her pitiful performance.

How was it so much harder to sing for one person she knew than to a crowd of strangers? How could she sound so sloppy and uncertain now when two days ago she'd performed the very same song in public and killed it? Her eyes flitted to Naruto and saw him smiling - not scowling, not gawking. No trace of judgment in his face at all. Just a grin of encouragement, spurring her on.

There was her answer of course, plain and simple. She didn't give a fuck what a bunch of drunk bar patrons thought, not even her friends. Naruto was different. Maybe she was intimidated by his talent or just the intimacy of the setting in light of recent events; but the bottom line was she cared what he thought of her, now more than ever. He had asked her to sing for his band, and she could either let her nerves get the best of her, or she could give it her all, even if that meant making a fool of herself. She was there to prove herself to him after all, and she would weather whatever embarrassment to save their friendship.

By the second verse a growl had come into her voice. She grabbed the mic stand like she had seen other singers do, and even though she was performing for a vacant drum set and a blank wall, she delivered each note with an impish intensity, a fire in her eyes as well as her words. By the end she barely blushed even as she faced her partner.

"That was rough," she admitted.

He shrugged. "You got there by the end. Besides, that's what warming up is for."

'Warming up.' As in just the beginning. Exactly how much did he have in store for her on her first day?

"Wanna go again?"

She cleared her throat. Why did everything sound like innuendo to her now? Somehow she had become more perverted than Naruto, she bemoaned, finding his face vacant of anything beyond an innocent suggestion. He seemed fixated on the music, at least for now, and she was more than happy to use that to her advantage.

"What else can you play?" she queried.

"We could do more Joan Jett. Do you know 'Cherry Bomb'?"

She did, but as she recalled it was basically an anthem for promiscuity (as well as one of Ino's go-to karaoke picks).

"Not very well," she lied.

As Naruto racked his brain he picked out a few chords, as if trying to jog his memory with the notes.

"What about the Breeders?"

She shook her head.

"You don't know the Breeders?" he cried, eyes wide in disbelief.

"Should I?"

"Hell yeah, you should! They're awesome." He began to play a tune, a slow, sliding melody that she had to admit was beautiful if foreign to her. When he had finished she was forced to shake her head again, shrugging helplessly.

"I'm sorry, I got nothing."

"Damn. I think you'd really like them. You should check 'em out."

She smiled weakly, but her mouth felt dry. The silence was growing awkward. Without music there was just the hammering of her heart and the unspoken secret between them, each growing louder with every passing second. She had no choice. It was time to bust out her secret weapon.

"You know, I did write something," she mumbled. His eyes snapped to her, brows cocked in intrigue.

"Really?" She nodded, watched his expression shift from surprise to pure excitement. "No shit! Can I see it?"

He seemed so delighted she didn't have the heart to say no. She had written it upon his suggestion after all; but as she retrieved the notepad from her bag, she suddenly thought how profoundly private it was, this thing she had poured out of her soul in a moment of personal turmoil. To share it with someone else meant giving them a glimpse inside of her, her hopes and fears and overall confliction - if what she'd written was even coherent at all. It took a considerable amount of guts to bare something like that to the world - or even to another set of eyes - to open it up to the judgment and scrutiny of others.

Yet Naruto had done it, and his audience had been much larger. Still, the more impressed she grew with him the more dwarfed she felt, turning to the page of scribbles she'd been so pleased about before.

"I'm sure it's not very good," she muttered, extending the notebook his way; "but maybe you can make something of it."

In his concentration he said nothing to refute or affirm her deprecation. Having set his guitar aside he grabbed the notebook and plopped down on the couch, eyes gliding intently over the page. He seemed to read it more than once, taking his time such that Sakura felt obligated to sit beside him rather than awkwardly stand and await his verdict.

When he finally spoke she couldn't read his face.

"This is...really good," he said, but his voice belied the praise he spoke. He sounded flat, underwhelmed. Her heart sank while her cheeks burned.

"You don't have to say that," she said, reaching for the pad; but he snatched it away, still reading.

"No, I mean it." A bit more emphatic, and when he looked at her his eyes seemed sincere, if not as elated as she'd hoped. "I really like it. I'd tell you if I didn't. Believe me."

Despite his reassuring smirk, she didn't. How could she when he'd always tried to protect her from getting hurt?

"I mean, yeah, it's different," he went on, "but that's exactly what we're looking for. It's perfect, Sakura-chan."

All further protest died on her lips. There it was, her old term of endearment, delivered with a smile no less. As if nothing had changed at all. A wave of relief washed over her like a baptism of retribution. The plan had worked.

Was working, she corrected herself. There was still a long way to go, but if one simple song had brought her this far, surely she could swing the rest. At last there seemed to be a light at the end of the tunnel, pulsing, warm and comforting despite the chilly room. She could fix this, she thought. They could fix this.

Aflutter with joy she melted back against the couch, concealing a giddy grin; but Naruto, to her surprise, had already returned his gaze to the notebook. He must have read it ten times by now, she marveled, trying to recall a single time the written word had so retained his focus. Yet there he was, poring over the text with a fastidiousness she had only witnessed in him on the battlefield, somehow in his songwriter's brain transmuting it into music. Turning her words into art. She couldn't help but watch as his eyes coursed across the page over and over. Those arresting, profound blue eyes…

...that had stared so deeply into hers as he'd poised between her legs, ready to enter her.

With a start Sakura's smile dropped. Her thoughts fell into an incoherent jumble, fighting off the image that had infiltrated her mind out of nowhere. She tried to think of something - anything - else, but she couldn't shake it, that increasingly vivid memory.

His hand clasped in hers, the other guiding his arousal toward her opening…

Suddenly she noticed their alarming position, knees all but touching, the undeniable sensation of his body heat on her skin. It seemed to permeate every inch of her, rendering the cool cellar air hot and stiff like the deepest day of summer. The naive flutter in her heart had ceased. Instead it pounded as a now familiar feeling burst forth, stupefying body and brain as her cohort lowered the notebook and sat back, bridging what little space remained between them.

"I knew you'd come through for us," he said, sounding to Sakura very far away, his words barely reaching her ears. But their reality, she knew too well, was just the opposite.

"O-of course," she managed, somehow, with a tongue dry as chalk.

Like a vampire beholding sunrise, she watched his oblivious blue eyes shift, and she knew he felt it too: the portent of their proximity, their limbs pressed flush where they sat; the two of them alone, on a couch, in the basement of an empty house.

She could run (as her instincts often insisted lately) or stand - hell, even look away. That would probably suffice to break the spell and snuff the moment out before it couldn't be ignored. But just as it had that night at his apartment door, and amongst the burning wreckage of the training grounds, Sakura's voice of reason had gone offline. All comms were dead, and only one thing - one thought, compulsion, reflex; whatever it was - remained in her mind:

Kiss him.

She couldn't tear her eyes from his lips, the memory of their surprising tenderness unshakeable. They were but inches away, slightly parted as if prone to meld with hers, ready to unleash a fervent tongue whose skill she had yet to forget. The voice in her head grew louder and louder until it seemed to resound throughout every inch of her, bellowing with such deafening magnitude she thought even he might be able to hear it -

And as if he could, he stood up.

Sakura blinked, the fervor ablaze within her replaced instantly with a sodden, nauseating shame. Had she moved toward him? Tried to kiss him, puppeted by whatever force had overtaken her? She didn't know.

"So do you have a tune worked out or anything?" Naruto asked, marching across the room to don his guitar again. Like a shield, she thought, protecting him from her.

"Um..." It took her a moment to realize he was talking about the song, glazing over what had happened with contrived nonchalance. When she could finally form words they came out pathetic and hushed. "...Not really."

He strummed a few riffs, the harsh notes piercing the room like lightning. He had turned up the volume significantly from before. All the better to eradicate the treacherous silence to which she had succumbed.

"Okay," he said after a moment, "no worries. I'll work on it and get back to you."

Without giving her a chance to respond he was playing again, face lowered and unreadable. He was dismissing her, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Somehow she had managed to fuck things up again and he was kicking her out. Her legs shook as she made for the exit, desperate to escape before the tears could fall.

"Hey!" he called, stopping her halfway up the stairs. Part of her still wanted to run, terrified of what he could possibly say; but another tethered her there, hoping, she realized, he would ask her to stay.

"Yeah?" she replied, forcing herself to face him with a smile even though it ached. The slew of emotions she contained was starting to turn her stomach.

"Can I hold onto this?" he asked, holding up the notebook.

She had forgotten all about it of course. If her bag hadn't been right at her feet she would've bolted without that too.

"Yeah, go for it." Again she started toward the door when he halted her.

"You sure you don't need it?" Was he stalling her? In her mess of a mind she couldn't tell. He stared up at her, face obscured by the stairway railing. She thought it might be sadness in his eyes, but perhaps it was just the effect of their reminiscent color.

"I've got about a thousand of them," she said. "Don't worry about it."

"Okay, well… We practice almost every day, so we'll get you back in here soon."

She nodded, afraid to open her mouth again lest she cry or puke or both. She held her breath until the evening air caressed her face and she was free, running across the Inuzukas' lawn toward town, toward her safe and empty apartment. Running away from another tragedy she had orchestrated yet did not understand.

A/N: I can't really justify why this took me four years to write. Let's call it intense writer's block.

And just fyi, I don't love making references to Joan Jett and other bands that exist in our reality... I know it seems out of place. But I figure this story takes place in what's basically the 90s, so it adds up. It was hard to avoid in this chapter, so ultimately I just figured WHATEVER MOVES THIS SHIT ALONG would have to work lol.

Also I might have mentioned before that these chapter titles are all song titles, reflecting either a song played in the chapter or just an appropriate song for its tone. I haven't listed the artists anywhere (yet), but I'm mentioning this one now. "Basement" is a song by All Dogs, who I guess are kind of obscure, but AMAZING. So you should all listen to them. Ohio based pop-punk with a female lead. :)

Dunno if anyone's still reading this but if you are, hi, enjoy the update. More to come (pray for me).