"Sakura..."

His hand caressed the side of her face gently. The minimal gap between them was now closing in. He was getting closer, closer...

"I love you," he whispered, brushing a loose lock of hair away from her face. They were inches apart now. Suddenly she felt her lips moving of their own accord.

"I love you too, Sasuke." Their lips met.

Sakura's eyes snapped open in horror. She sat up suddenly and stared wildly around. She breathed a sigh of relief as she realised that she was safe in her bed and not really kissing the two faced moron. All of a sudden she remembered the events of the previous evening. Groaning, she slumped back into her pillows. She prayed that he just wasn't still here.

Feeling around for her clock on the bedside table, she grabbed it and checked the time. With a moan she realised that it was only six am. Realising that she would never get back to sleep now, she pulled herself out of bed and began to make her way downstairs.

However, coming down the stairs, she realised she wasn't that hungry so she just decided to head straight into the living room.

Upon reaching the door, she pulled it open and was just about to walk through it when she crashed into what felt like a wall. As she toppled to the ground she felt a strong arm wrap around her small waist, steadying her.

Her eyes refocusing, she found herself staring at the best eight pack she had ever seen. No wonder the person had felt like a wall, his chest looked just about rock hard.

"Like what you see?"

Oh great... just what I need at six in the morning.

She looked up slowly at the owner of the eight pack, fighting off the urge to strangle him, a glare forming on her pretty face. Sasuke smirked back down at her, having seen where her eyes had been just a second before.

It was then that she realised that the obnoxious twit still had arm wrapped around her waist, holding her up. She made a little disgusted noise and, pulling herself into a standing position, she firmly removed Sasuke's arm shooting him the dirtiest look she could muster.

"Why are you still here? Don't you have someone else to knock out and leave on a cold stone bench?" she snapped icily, trying to push past him into the living room. Immovable, he stood there, no longer smirking.

"Move," she hissed, trying to push him out of the way.

"No," he said simply.

She stamped her foot crossly and crossed her arms. He chuckled at this. The same old Sakura.

"Are you doing this because you have something to say to me or are you just trying to piss me off?" she snapped at him.

"The first one," he stated, looking her directly in the eye "Sakura, I wanted to explain to you why I lef-"

"Explain?! Explain?! I know why you left!" She said, her voice uncharacteristically high pitched "You left because Naruto and I weren't good enough for you! None of us were! Not for you and your little revenge schemes!"

"No!" defended Sasuke "It wasn't like tha-"

The rest of Sasuke's sentence was drowned out by a mirthless laugh from Sakura.

"But of course we never mattered to you, did we?" she continued "You just used us to get what you wanted and when we weren't good enough for that you just-"

"Sakura!" he said, grabbing her wrists and pulling her towards him. His cold eyes seemed to soften as he looked down at her. "You mattered to me a lot," he said quietly. She stared up at him blankly.

They stood there in silence, waiting for the other to betray any signs of emotion, but they were both far too good at this game to lose. It was just then that Sakura noticed just how close they were. They were nothing more than a few inches apart. They were so close that Sakura could feel Sasuke's hot breath tickling her face...

"Guys?"

Their heads snapped around to see Neji halfway down the stairs, frozen in mid-step, a look of complete shock on his face.

Sakura knew it must have looked suggestive. After all, Sasuke was shirtless, he was holding onto her wrists and they were very, very, very close. A slight blush crept up her cheeks.

She tried to pull her wrists out of Sasuke's firm grasp, but he didn't seem to want to let go. Neji still stood there, at a complete loss for words, gawking at the two of them.

"Let go!" she hissed furiously. Sasuke jumped and looked down in surprise. He had evidently forgotten that he was holding onto her wrists. He dropped them instantly but did not step back. Sakura looked back up at Neji and to her annoyance saw that he had a slight smirk playing on his lips.

"My my, Sasuke, don't you have any self control?" he said, his smirk widening "Whathave you two been doing?"

"Nothing!" they both yelled simultaneously at him.

"In the hallway as well? Naughty, naughty," he tutted. "Sasuke you scoundrel!"

"Neji, you better start running now, because when I find you, and after I'm done beating the crap out of you, there won't be anything left to bury," said Sasuke furiously, a manic glint of red in his eyes.

Neji turned on his heal and sprinted up the stairs, howling with laughter. This was evidently too much for Sasuke's pride to handle, because a second later a dozen fireballs zoomed after Neji, singing little holes in the various things they hit, such as the carpet and of course, Neji's clothes.

Scowling at the retreating form of Neji, Sasuke heard an angry cough. He looked down at Sakura and saw her glaring at him and pointing and the holes in her carpet.

He rubbed the back of his neck nervously and said sheepishly "I'll um... I'll get that fixed..."

She turned on her heel and stalked away from him to a different door. Sighing, he turned around and went back into the living room to retrieve his shirt. He didn't want Neji saying anything else. Eventually finding it, he went back into the hall way and headed over to the door that Sakura had gone through. Pulling it open, the smell of frying tomatoes wafted over to him. He looked over to the source of the smell and saw Sakura standing at the stove, chopping up tomatoes and throwing them irritably into a frying pan.

Suppressing a grin, he sauntered over to her and lent on the bench

"What?" she snapped, viciously attacking the tomatoes.

"Nothing," he said, casually taking a piece of tomato and popping it into his mouth.

"Don't you have anything better to do?" she said, slapping his hand away as he reached to take another tomato.

"Nope"

She glared at him. He hadn't changed one bit. Except for the fact that he talked a bit more. Still, that wasn't necessarily a good thing...

"You know you're going to have to turn yourself into Tsunade, don't you?"

"Hn"

"Are you going to do it?"

"Hn"

"When?"

"Today"

She fell silent and continued to chop up the tomatoes, all the while Sasuke watching her. It seemed to him that he had never fully appreciated how beautiful she was. It almost mesmerised him the way that the light reflected off her hair, the way her eyes-

No stop this! Bad Sasuke! This is Sakura we're thinking about!

So...?

Let me explain: firstly, she hates me now-

Whose fault is that?

-Secondly, it's not my fault she's hot, I-

So you admit it?

Yes- no- oh shit.

So you do like her

Hey! I never said that!

You know for a genius you sure are dumb

Piss off

"Sasuke? Are you listening to me?"

Sasuke jumped, awakening from his mental argument, and looked down to see Sakura with her hands on her hips, looking, for about the third time that day, extremely annoyed with him.

She's sexy when she's mad.

Argh! Shut up!

"Sasuke, were you actually listening to a word I was saying?" she asked.

"Oh, I um... yeah, it was something about... err..." he trailed off, looking sheepish.

She gave an irritable sigh and turned away muttering something that sounded like 'boys'.

At that moment Neji chose to come strutting in, his smirk still intact, yet with little singed holes in his pyjamas.

"It's nice to see you fully clothed again, Sasuke."

If looks could kill then Neji would probably have evaporated on the spot under the furious glare that Sasuke shot at him. Giving him a smug look, he leant lazily on the counter on the other side of Sakura.

"Is breakfast ready yet?"

"Well, it would be ready much sooner if people actually HELPED!" Sakura snapped furiously "And if SOMEONE would stop eating the tomatoes!" Sasuke froze, a piece of tomato halfway to his mouth.

"Yeah Sasuke," taunted Neji, his smirk widening.

Sakura smacked him over the head and said "Neji, do you think you could stop being an asshole for a few minutes and go and get me some bacon!?"

It was Sasuke's turn to smirk. However when Sakura saw this it only seemed to enrage her even more.

"And you!" she snapped, poking him hard in the chest "You- you just do something useful!"

"Like what?" he asked incredulously, rubbing his chest where she had poked him.

"I don't know! Just do something! Wait- get me five eggs from the cupboard!"

Sighing, Sasuke did as he was told. This was going to be a long morning...

Half an hour, several shouting matches and many thrown objects (courteousy of Sakura) later, five figures sat around the kitchen table, each with a plate of food in front of them.

Two of the figures appeared to be cringing, one looked murderous, another looked thoroughly exasperated and the last just looked downright confused.

"So... guys...?"

Everyone turned around to stare at Naruto. As Naruto had been drunk the night before, he had naturally not remembered anything, so poor Sasuke had to go through Naruto's greeting ceremony again, which involved a lot of shouting, a couple of attempted punches and a giant bear hug. Now it seemed that Naruto was letting everything sink in, and it was proving a difficult task for him.

He looked between Sasuke, Neji, who seemed to be very apprehensive, and Sakura, who was shooting them both death glares. His eyes then wandered over to Hinata, who looked thoroughly exasperated.

She looks really pretty today.

She always looks pretty

Yeah... wait did I just say that!?

Hinata and Naruto had walked into the kitchen earlier to find a literal battle scene in front of them. Sakura had been in the process of throwing a deadly looking kitchen knife at Neji, who had been forced to dive behind the kitchen counter in order to keep his manhood intact and Sasuke had been desperately trying to restrain Sakura, whilst trying to hide anything sharp in Sakura's reach. Amazingly the breakfast had managed to come out unscathed.

"Nothing..." muttered Naruto, concentrating on his food once again. They all continued to stare at him for a while longer before shaking their heads and returning to their food. They all sat there in what seemed to be an unbreakable silence, Hinata and Naruto occasionally exchanging glances.

Suddenly there was a loud rap on the door. They all looked in the direction of the hallway, looking surprised. It was only about eight and it seemed a little early for visitors. Sakura slowly slid of her chair and went to answer it.

Once in the hallway, Sakura headed over to the large front door. She turned the lock and pulled the door open to reveal two young, fairly muscular male ninjas.

"Sakura-chan," began one of them, shooting her a flirty grin.

"Kenji!" exclaimed Sakura, giggling at his cheesy grin.

There were quite a few things that Sasuke disliked. He usually added to that list every day, with things such as Naruto's newest favourite flavour of ramen, or a new fan girl but today, it was this boy 'Kenji'. He also did not like that little giggle Sakura had given when he had called her 'Sakura-chan'. He was NOT allowed to flirt with Sakura.

The piece of toast in his hand now resembled a fine powder and the crumbs were falling gently from his clenched fist. If he wasn't so wrapped up in his own anger, he would have seen the others looking at him with alarmed expressions and he would have heard Neji cough "Jealous" although, perhaps that was a good thing.

Dumping the powdered toast on his plate, he stormed out of the kitchen, with a look of pure blood-lust in his eyes. He was going to rip that 'Kenji' limb from limb.

Exchanging worried glances, the others hurried out of the room after him, somewhat fearing for the life of Kenji. They knew that when an Uchiha was angry, the results were never generally very pretty. And this Uchiha wasn't just angry, he was jealous. Very, very jealous. This was a sight that none of them had ever seen before and never thought that they would see. They half expected pigs to start flying around at any moment, it was so surreal. But no, this was real, horribly real...

Sakura, still talking to Kenji, felt someone coming up behind her. Looking over shoulder, she saw Sasuke striding towards her and the two young men with a look of... anger?

"Who are you?" he said bluntly, stopping beside Sakura, who looked rather taken aback.

Sakura cut in before they could answer "This is Kenji," she said, smiling at the man, a smile which earned the man a glare from Sasuke. "And this is Yuji," she added, pointing to the other man.

"What do you want?" he asked rudely, noticing smugly that the men looked slightly scared. Being an S-class 'criminal' had its perks after all.

"We err... Tsunade sent us," said Yuji, trying to avoid Sasuke's ice cold glare. "She wants to see you and Sakura-chan in her office immediately. Do you want us to take you there Sak-"

"No, I'll take her," stated Sasuke coldly, slamming the door in there startled faces. He eyed the door furiously, as if to say to the men outside "If you dare knock on that door again, I WILL kill you."

"You didn't have to be so rude to them, you know," Sakura said crossly, looking up at him.

Ignoring her last comment, he said "You had better go and get changed, if we've got to go to Tsunade," He looked her up and down slowly. She was still in her rather small pyjamas.

Glaring at him, she stormed off up the stairs.

Feeling grumpy, Sasuke turned around to see Neji, Naruto and Hinata all standing in a row, watching him with that same look of disbelief on each of their faces.

"What?!" he snapped.

They didn't say anything, but just filed back into the kitchen slowly, each one of them rolling their eyes.

Fifteen minutes later Sakura came back downstairs, dressed in a denim mini skirt and light green halter neck. Her long pink hair flowed down her back. She had grown it back to the same length she had had it as a child. Sasuke, who had been waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, found the only thing that was keeping his jaw form dropping to the floor was his Uchiha pride. He didn't understand why she was having such a big effect on him. She had never made him feel like this when they were younger. But then again, this Sakura was a woman now and a very beautiful one at that. She didn't pine after him as she had done. In a way, Sasuke doubted that he would've minded if she had. Hell, he probably would have liked it. Maybe he was...

No. No way. I am not attracted to her!

I wouldn't call it attracted...

Then what the hell would you call it?

Oh, I don't know. Maybe that little four lettered word, l-o-v-

No. Stop right there. There is now way that I am in love, especially not with Sakura!

Damn you and your pride. You know if there was one thing I could change about you, I'd-

"Are you ready?" Sakura said, giving him the ghost of a smile.

To kiss you, yes

Shut up!

No

Sasuke grunted and made his way over to the door, still arguing with himself. Sighing, Sakura followed after him, feeling slightly exasperated by his lack of speech.

It took them about ten minutes to get to Tsunade's office. Many people had given Sasuke startled looks and had promptly begun to start whispering behind their hands to one another. Sakura, on the other hand, was an entirely different case. Many men were staring at her and a couple wolf whistled at her. Sasuke gave them all venomous glares, even if they did not approach her. He was not going to let other men look at her like that. He was-

A jealous prick

I hate you

Then you hate yourself, dumbass

Get lost!

I love annoying you

At the door, Sakura knocked lightly, and they waited. A couple of seconds later they heard a very harassed sounding "Come in"

Entering, they saw Tsunade sitting at her desk, looking tired, grumpy and strangely, slightly nervous.

"Sasuke?"

"Yes," he said stiffly, feeling slightly awkward.

"The elders know you're back," she said bluntly, not bothering with preamble "Someone tipped them off last night. They said they saw you outside a bar with Naruto."

"Yeah," he muttered "But I wasn't drinking!"

"I don't care whether you were drinking or not," she said, getting out some papers from her draw.

Sasuke instinctively looked at the cans of sake sitting under her desk. So she still drank that crap...

"I am here with you to discuss the consequences of you leaving the village. You were classed as an S-class criminal and-"

"What do you mean 'were'?"

"Well, as of last night the elders have decided to clear you of all charges. You won't have probation, or any of the usual punishments, but they have a catch."

Sasuke grunted. He didn't think he would get off that lightly. The catch was probably going to be nasty.

"They want you to marry and produce an heir."

Sasuke groaned.

Great. Really great

"But then why am I here?" asked Sakura confusedly "Do you want me to do something at the hospital?"

"Well... not exactly..." Tsunade said, shifting around in her chair, and looking guiltily at Sakura.

Sasuke's eyes widened. She couldn't possibly mean...

No, God, please no. Anything but this-

"Well, as to who Sasuke marries, the council have a suggestion... well more of a preference... Ok fine, an order-"

-Please, I know I've done a lot of wrong in my life, but I promise you that if she's not about to say what I think she is, then-

"Sasuke, the council, err..."

-I'll never do anything wrong ever again in my life. I'll pray every night, I'll help the needy, I'll give away a quarter of my fortune to the poor-

"Sasuke, they want you to marry..."

-No, fine I'll give away half of it, hell, I'll give away all of it! Just don't make me marry-

"Sakura"

AN: Cliffy! Hey guys, thanks for reading! Pleeeeeeeaaaaaaase review! Please with a cherry on top?! (Gives puppy dog eyes) Cookies for everyone who does!

Anyway, as you can guess our darling Sakura probably won't be overjoyed with the prospect of marrying our beloved Sasuke (I wouldn't mind) but we'll just have to wait and see, wont we?

By the way, don't flame me! If you want to criticize, just be nice!

(I'll try and update as soon as I can!)