Summary: AU Pickpocketing and stealing are the only things Naruto knows to survive in the busy streets of Konoha. But what happens when she stole a wallet from the wrong guy, namely Uchiha Sasuke? What does fate have in stored for these two? SasuFemNaru

Pairings: SasuFemNaru, LeeSaku, NejiTen, KibaHina, JirTsu, ShikaTema, ChouIno

Warnings: Language, Sexual terms, Violence

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Thieving Gets You Nowhere
by Aesura

Welcome Back Rock Lee!

Shivering, Sasuke woke up to find all the blankets he had on his bed pulled to the side and wrapped around an unidentifiable lump on the far edge of his queen size bed. The small shock of blonde hair against his dark blue sheets and paler blue blankets triggered the memory of Naruto crawling into bed with him the night before. He could only assume that the lump was her.

The lump shifted and a leg was kicked out from beneath the blankets, revealing bare skin from her ankle all the way up to her thigh. His onyx eyes traced over the slender limb even as he struggled not to. A loud crack of thunder finally jarred him enough to pull his gaze from her to look out the rain-streaked window.

Rain fell from the darkened sky in sheets, making it impossible for Sasuke to see very far into the distance. A burst of white hot lightning in the black clouds illuminated the city for a moment before plunging it back into the dismal darkness. The low rumble of thunder that followed was enough to rattle the windows, making Sasuke glad that he had no plans for leaving the apartment today. It was one of those days that you simply spent lounging around the house, curling up with a blanket and a good book or movie.

With a soft groan and a yawn, Sasuke swung his legs off the bed and sat up, stretching somewhat before he stood up. Rubbing his eyes, he blindly stared at the small alarm clock at his bedside, willing the glaring red numbers to come into focus. Since the dark clouds managed to prevent any sunshine from reaching his window, he was unable to accurately judge the time by that like he normally would.

The red numbers finally came into focus, showing that it was well after ten and quickly nearing eleven, much later than he would normally sleep, Sunday or not. But, then again, he and Naruto had stayed up well into the morning watching movies the night before, so he felt somewhat justified for sleeping so late.

After slightly taming his hair, Sasuke began to leave the bedroom to start cooking breakfast, coming to the conclusion that Naruto would awaken when the smells of bacon and sausage frying assaulted her nostrils. But, just as he was at the door, a loud THUNK met his ears and he spun around to find the lump on his bed now on the floor, blankets and pillows with it and unmoving.

Sighing as he ran a hand through his hair, Sasuke approached the lump and squatted to see if she had hit her head on the bedside table on her way down. A soft snore was his reply as he pulled the blanket away from her face. He noted that she burrowed even further down into the blankets, making a noise that sounded like something between a whimper and a grunt.

While Sasuke stayed there debating whether to leave her on the floor or pick her up and put her back on the bed, her indigo eyes fluttered open, blinking a few times to clear her vision. "Sasuke?" she mumbled, her brows furrowed as she looked around the room confusedly before she remembered climbing into bed with him the night before. But, now she wondered why she was on the floor and not the bed. "What am I doing on the floor?"

"A ghost kicked you out of the bed," he told her jokingly. "And how did you not wake up when you fell off?"

"I didn't get much sleep last night between the nightmares and your snoring," Naruto muttered, closing her eyes and running a hand through her tangled mess of hair. She sleepily rubbed her eyes, sitting up as she did so and leaned back against the mattress.

Raising an eyebrow, Sasuke regarded her with mock indignation as he rose to his feet, crossing his arms over his still bare chest. "I do not snore," he said with playful resentment while she simply stared at him and yawned.

"Sure, you don't. And pigs are flying past outside that window and demons are skating around on ice rinks and-" She would have continued on if it hadn't been for the flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder coming from the clouds outside, causing her to shudder and clench her eyes tightly shut in an attempt to block out the storm.

Sasuke watched the girl confusedly as she stopped mid-sentence and began to take deep breaths. "Naruto?" he called softly, squatting down next to her once more. When she didn't respond to her name, he dropped a hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"It was raining..." she began, her eyes still closed and her breath coming in ragged gasps now as she tried not to cry. "It was raining when... when I was kicked out." Another shudder went through her body as she remembered the scene of the deranged drunken man. "The rain... the rain makes me remember."

Not knowing what else to do, Sasuke simply gave her shoulder another reassuring squeeze, causing her to turn her head and look up at him with a shaky smile. "Thanks, Sasuke," she whispered as she slowly brought her own hand up to cover his, thankful that he hadn't teased her about her dislike of the rain.

As much as he wanted to stay there on the floor with her, with her hand covering his, he knew he couldn't and he once more rose to his feet. "I'm going to go start breakfast," he told her, beginning to walk out of the room, but stopping in the doorway to turn and look at her again. "Anything in particular that you want?"

"Uh... just anything with a lot of sugar?" Naruto said questioningly, her head cocked to the side like a curious puppy as she stared at him. "French toast maybe?"

Sasuke nodded as he left the room, muttering something about Naruto's near constant intake of sugar rivaling that of a hummingbird's. How she managed to eat so much of it without making herself sick or sending herself into a diabetic coma was beyond his knowledge.

Climbing to her feet, Naruto looked around the room momentarily, catching her reflection in the mirror over his dresser and realizing that her hair was a lanky, snarled mess, before picking the blankets up off the floor and quickly making Sasuke's bed for him. It was her way of thanking him for letting her sleep in their with him. That, and she had made a twisted, tangled wad out of his blankets and sheets not only from falling off the bed and taking them with her, but also from hogging them all and enveloping herself into her self-made cocoon.

Finally getting the bed into some semblance of neatness, Naruto retreated from Sasuke's bedroom and into hers, quickly grabbing some clothes, a pair of blue jeans, an oversized sweatshirt, and her undergarments, before heading to the bathroom for a shower. She hoped she still had time before Sasuke finished making breakfast as she really didn't much care for cold French toast.

In the kitchen, Sasuke was in the middle of cutting thick slices of bread off the loaf of bread he had bought at a local bakery a few days before when there was a soft knock on the door.

Upon opening the door, he found Sakura dressed in a light pink sweater and a faded pair of blue jeans. Her brilliant green eyes widened incredibly when she saw what Sasuke was wearing. "Sasuke-kun! Don't tell me you're still going around in your underwear all day on Sundays?" she demanded, forcing her way into the apartment, like she was prone to do, and glaring at him.

"Uh... yeah. Why?" Sasuke asked confusedly, wondering why it really even mattered to Sakura. The sudden impact of her hand hitting him hard on the back of his head made him wince and rub the area. "And what was that for?"

Sakura let out a frustrated half growl, half scream as she scowled at him. "Sasuke-kun, you have a seventeen year old girl living in your apartment and you're wandering around all day in your boxers?" she hissed rather loudly, her face screwed up in annoyance. "Uchiha Sasuke, I thought you had better sense than that!"

Sasuke held up his hands in defeat, backing away a few feet from the pinkette in case she decided to hit him once more. "Okay, okay. You win, Sakura. My decency standards will go," he relented, starting down the hall to get dressed before she could yell at him anymore.

Naruto saw him pass by her bedroom door as she was coming out of it, having heard the whole conversation between him and Sakura. It was kind of hard not to when Sakura's voice had reached a whole new octave as she reprimanded the man. Naruto silently cursed the pinkette for ruining her Sunday eyeful of Sasuke shirtless as she made her way into the living room. "Thanks a lot, Sakura-chan," she grumbled as she strode to the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of orange juice.

"For what?" Sakura asked confusedly until she saw Naruto beginning to drink the juice directly from the carton and slapped herself on the forehead, already having forgotten her previous question. "Naruto, don't do that. It's disgusting!"

Quirking an eyebrow, Naruto rolled her eyes and pulled a glass down from the cabinet. "It's not like you're going to be drinking any, Sakura-chan," she muttered as she poured herself a glass and put the carton back into the refrigerator. By now, Sasuke had wandered back into the kitchen, wearing navy pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt, a smirk on his face as he saw Naruto also being rebuked by the pinkette. Naruto stuck her tongue out at him.

"I assume you came over for some other reason than just to yell at us, Sakura," Sasuke prompted as he went back to preparing the French toast, cracking a few eggs into a bowl and beginning to beat them.

Shaking her head, Sakura sat on the stool at the counter and briefly rubbed her forehead. "I came to invite you two over for dinner tonight since Lee just returned last night," she announced cheerfully. "Sort of a 'Welcome Home' dinner."

Sasuke stopped what he was doing to turn around and look at her, a perplexed expression on his face. "I thought Lee wasn't coming back for another two weeks?"

"So did I, but he turned up waiting for me last night," Sakura explained, remembering the bouquet of flowers her boyfriend had given her. "Didn't Naruto tell you–" She broke off when she remembered that Naruto couldn't have told Sasuke since she hadn't actually been introduced to him. "Oh, Naruto, I'm sorry I was so rude last night. But, I hadn't seen him for months."

Laughing, Naruto came and sat next to the pinkette on the counter, ignoring the glare from Sasuke as she did so. He hated it when she sat on the counters. "Sakura-chan, it's okay. You probably had a lot of things to... catch up on..." she said, winking as she did so and remembering the way Sakura had attacked the man lips first.

"Speaking of which, where is Lee?" Sasuke asked curiously.

"Uh... he's still sleeping. I would be, too, if Tsunade-sama had not needed me to write a few medical reports she'd forgotten… We didn't get much sleep last night," the pinkette admitted quietly, blushing slightly at the implication but fighting it back down when she remembered that she really had nothing to be embarrassed about. Her boyfriend had been gone for months and she had missed him. "Anyways, I'll see you two around seven?" she asked, heading towards the door but stopping to wait for their assent, which they readily gave. "It's only going to be the four of us. Lee still wants to surprise everyone back at the station, so don't tell anyone."

After she was gone, Sasuke turned to Naruto, his eyebrows raised. "So, Lee showed up last night?"

Eyes brightening considerably and a broad smile coming across her face, she told him about what happened the night before when her and Sakura came back to the apartment. She even told him how she thought, at first, that pinkette was attacking an innocent poet-reciting civilian. Naruto never even noticed that she had completely forgotten about the rain outside and all her memories associated with it.

Dinner that night at Lee's and Sakura's house was full of laughs as old friends were reunited and new friendships forged. At first, Naruto had been quiet and shy around Lee, not really knowing how she should act around him. That is, she was until she remembered him saying that pick-up line the night before when Sakura pounced him. And before she even thought about what she was doing, she had asked him if he made up that cheesy phrase.

Sputtering and blushing slightly, Lee quickly told her 'no.' It took a moment for the humor of the situation to sink in and then both Lee and Naruto burst out laughing. Embarrassing as it was, they soon both realized that it had actually made quite an efficient icebreaker.

After they had eaten the dinner Sakura had prepared, during which Naruto learned why the pinkette rarely cooked as the chicken was overdone, the potatoes were underdone, and the rolls just burnt, the group had retreated to the living room where Lee pulled out some pictures from his trip. The first picture happened to be of a group of men lined up in a boat. Nothing extraordinary until Naruto noticed that their feet were sticking out of the bottom of the boat. "Are they... is that... are they trying to be the Flintstones?" she finally asked, blinking a few times as she took the picture and held it closer to her face, as though that would help it make more sense.

"No, it's a picture from the Todd River Regatta," Lee told her, laughing and leaning back on the sofa with his arm around Sakura's shoulders; she was leaning against his side and had an arm draped around his waist. "It's a boat race in Alice Springs, Australia except they have it on a dry river."

"Still looks like the Flintstones to me," Naruto mumbled, taking another look at the picture before she passed it on to Sasuke, who was seated in the chair next to her. "Don't you think so, teme?"

Lee looked back and forth between the two roommates for a moment, wondering if Sasuke was going to explode after being called 'teme'. The expected rebuttal never came and Lee gave Sakura a confused look. She merely shrugged her shoulders.

"I thought you went to China, Lee?" Sasuke asked as he looked at the picture in his hands, silently agreeing with Naruto but not wanting to admit it out loud. "And, Naruto, I'm sure if you were to tell them," he gestured towards the men in the picture, "that you think they look like the Flintstones, they'd be insulted."

"And? What are they gonna do?" she questioned, raising her eyebrows and laughing a little. "Sic rabid kangaroos on me?"

Lee rummaged around in his pictures for a moment before producing another one and handing it to Naruto. "Nope, probably those," he said, pointing to the massive crocodile sunbathing on the bank of a nameless river. "And, Sasuke, I was in China. But, a couple of friends of mine persuaded me to make a trip down to Australia, and I managed to catch the Todd River Regatta on my free weekend."

Naruto was still staring at the massive reptile in the photo, gulping loudly as her eyes drifted over to the open mouthful of teeth. "They... uh... really have those in the rivers down there?" she asked hesitantly, her cerulean eyes wide as she thought about coming face to face with one of those crocodiles.

"Yep," Lee replied, pulling out another picture and then blushing as he quickly tried to hide it behind the others. "How did that one get in there?" he muttered under his breath, ignoring Sakura's giggling as she had seen the picture as he tried to hide it.

"Ooh... what is it?" Naruto inquired excitedly, grabbing the picture from him with practiced ease. After all, she had been a first rate pickpocket. At least, in her opinion she was. She looked at the picture and began laughing uncontrollably, bending over and clutching her stomach with one arm.

Sasuke looked over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of the picture, which proved futile as she was moving around so much while she laughed that he was unable to see it. He finally reached over and grabbed the picture with little protest from her. Blinking a few times, he looked back and forth between the picture and Lee before he found his voice. "Okay, Lee. What did you do?" he demanded. This photo was evidence of the fleeting stupidity Lee sometimes possessed.

"Look, before I flew back to Japan, I just happened to be in Pamplona during the Running of the Bulls," he began, trying in vain to grab the picture from Sasuke, but the Uchiha simply kept it out of his reach. "And some of the guys talked me into trying it."

"And a bull got you in the ass," Sasuke finished for him, smirking as he did so.

"IT'S MY UPPER THIGH!" Lee bellowed, making another lunge, and failing, for the picture.

Naruto stopped laughing long enough to take another peek at the picture Sasuke held. "It looks like your ass to me," she chimed in, beginning to giggle again. "I bet that hurt, too, didn't it? Like, you couldn't sit down for awhile, huh?"

Lee finally managed to take the picture away from Sasuke, but not before his dignity had been shattered. "Yeah, yeah... laugh all you want. At least I was brave enough to run with the bulls," Lee replied smugly.

"You mean stupid enough?" Sasuke said frankly.

Sakura, who had been fairly quiet the whole evening, simply holding onto Lee and leaning against him, finally decided to defuse the situation before the men's teasing turned into a friendly brawl which they were sometimes known to do. "Lee, did you bring home the chocolate like I asked you, too?" she questioned quietly, lifting her eyes to his.

"Of course I did," he whispered as he leaned down to chastely kiss her lips, not caring that Sasuke and Naruto were watching them. Slowly, he arose from the sofa and headed down the hall to their bedroom, emerging a few minutes later with box of chocolates in his hands. He handed them to Sakura as he sat back down next to her.

In turn, Sakura passed the item over to Naruto, smiling as she did so. "Here, Naruto. I had Lee get these for you while he was still in Europe," the pinkette said, settling back up against her husband and she fought back a yawn.

"Aw, you guys! You didn't have to–," Naruto began, only to be cut off by Lee.

"We know we didn't have to, but we wanted to," he told her, remembering the way his girlfriend had gushed about the teenager over the phone. She talked about her so much, that Lee felt like he knew her before he even really met her.

Conversation continued for a while longer until Sasuke kept noticing the yawns Sakura tried and failed to hide. It was then he spared a glance at the clock and realized it was well after eleven o'clock and both he and Naruto had to get up to go to work early the next morning. Not to mention the files he needed to look over that night as he had forgotten about them the day before. "Naruto, I think we need to go," Sasuke announced, rising from his chair as he did so.

"Do we have to?" Naruto pouted, enjoying herself more than she had in a very long while and really not wanting to leave. "Can't we just stay a little while longer?"

Not wanting to argue and seeing that both Sakura and Lee were growing tired (Lee had failed in suppressing a yawn as well), Sasuke did the only thing he could think of at the moment. He hoisted the girl into his arms and threw her over his shoulder, keeping one arm on her legs to keep her from falling. Giving Lee and Sakura their goodbyes, he ignored the protesting girl on his shoulder as she whined and complained about him carrying her around like a sack of potatoes.

However, once they were out of the two lovebird's house, Naruto quit complaining when she realized that being over his shoulder did have it's advantages. She had an unobstructed view of his ass from her position, which, she had to admit, was just as nicely made as the rest of him. So, she was greatly disappointed when he dropped her from his shoulder outside his car though she did a remarkable job of hiding her disappointment with an angry scowl during the drive back to the apartment.

"You didn't have to do that, you know?" she grumbled for what seemed like the umpteenth time, trudging into the apartment when he opened the door. "I would have left in a minute."

Sasuke didn't answer her for a moment, instead only raising his eyebrows and giving her a look that said he gravely disbelieved that. "Naruto, we both have to get up early and I still have to finish my paperwork..."

"Alright, alright," she muttered, hating that he was right, especially when she realized how sleepy she actually was. "And I guess I'll be going to bed then." She wandered down the hall, turning at her bedroom door to look back into living room and kitchen area to see Sasuke pulling out a briefcase that overflowed with a stack of papers when he opened it.

Hours later, Naruto awoke to a rumbling stomach and an insatiable craving for the chocolate chip cookies she knew Sasuke had bought a few days before. But, as she crawled out of her bed, she realized that the kitchen light was still on and was dimly shining through to her bedroom. Looking at her clock, she realized that it was around three in the morning and Sasuke should have been in bed hours ago.

So, creeping down the hallway and into the kitchen to see what was going on, Naruto found Sasuke asleep, slumped over the counter with his head resting on a stack of papers. She quietly approached him, stopping long enough to grab the cookies out of the cabinet and pour herself a glance of milk, and sat down next to him, carefully pulling the stack of papers out from under his head and stared down at the figures with furrowed brows. Running her finger down the long list of names and numbers lined up on the side of the page, she bit her lip in bewilderment and apprehension.

Gaoka Arashi. . . . . . . . . . . . .2316
Omoi Jirobo. . . . . . . . . . . . . .1451
Tora Mizuki. . . . . . . . . . . . . .0347
Kumo Kidomaru. . . . . . . . . . .0731
Hone Kimimaro. . . . . . . . . . .0148
Tsuchi Kin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1920

What did these names mean? Naruto had no idea… A mumble jolted Naruto out of her snooping; she quickly held her breath and looked over at Sasuke. He was still asleep. Good. Oblivious of the dark photos buried underneath the papers, she quietly placed the files back into the briefcase along with the other documents and photos Sasuke had pulled out, then shut the briefcase with a soft click.

She then left and finally returned to her room to catch, hopefully, a few more hours of sleep before Sasuke would awaken her in the morning.