"Damn, she is such a bitch." Ino grumbled, flipping the cranky old head nurse off behind her back. Ino fumbled with the stack of folders the nurse had brusquely pushed into her arms, accompanied by a haughty grin. "Can't wait till she drops dead."

Sakura snorted. She'd always found other people's misfortunes amusing. Her own however, didn't amuse her quite as well.

Such as this morning.

For three hours, Sakura had been pleasingly preoccupied by Ino in the lab of the hospital, performing experiments with poisons and their remedies, so Sakura didn't have much time to think about the man she woke up to this morning.

The tall, muscular, sexy man who smelled like goddamn cinnamon and she fucking loved cinnamon.

Flashes of his muscles tensing came to mind as he fiddled with the kettle in his kitchen this morning, rippling as he reached for the sugar from the top shelf and then tensing even more as he rolled his shoulders back and forth. The scratch marks that trailed down his back didn't help her attraction any.

"Sakura-sama? You have a, uh… a visitor." No matter how many times Sakura strongly insisted the medics at the hospital drop the honorifics, they never did. Sakura turned around to politely chastise the new medic, but her words were caught in her throat.

The medic, Midori, was gazing up at Kakashi with a look Sakura could only describe as admiration and new-found infatuation. Kakashi paid no mind to the flushed girl as he stepped into the lab and looked around, before finally allowing his eyes to settle on Sakura.

"Thank you, Midori-san." Kakashi smiled at his new admirer charmingly, and Sakura could've sworn the girl thought she'd just died and gone to Heaven. After mumbling a panicky 'goodbye', Midori left, leaving Kakashi with Ino and Sakura.

The lab wasn't very large nor was it small. There were desks littered with stacks of folders and scrolls and tables strewn with flasks and bubbling vials. It was a Sunday and during the morning to early after-noon, Sakura and Ino were the only ones working. "Kakashi-sensei," Sakura greeted.

"Sakura," he replied as he made his way to her desk. Kakashi was taken aback by Sakura's casualness. He'd have thought that because of her reaction to him this morning, she'd have bolted out of the room by now, avoiding him at all costs.

Little did he know that that was exactly what Sakura was thinking of doing.

"Ino." The blonde girl said wryly, however not as a greeting, more as a way to remind Kakashi and Sakura that she was still there. A grin plastered itself onto Ino's face as she watched the two look at her before looking at each other.

"I came to talk about..." Kakashi cast a cagey glance at Ino before dropping his voice, "Last night."

Sakura unhurriedly rose from her seat and made her way around the desk so that she was standing almost toe to toe with Kakashi. She looked at him with interest, "Yeah?"

Kakashi didn't like having people listen in to his private conversations and when he cast another wary glimpse at Ino who was sitting at her own desk, her chin on her fist and her eyes animatedly watching the whole exchange, he realized that he didn't like that either. "Can we talk alone?"

Sakura was so caught up in the alluring memory of his unmasked face that she didn't realize his eyes flicker to Ino with carefully concealed deliberation. She glanced at Ino from the corner of her eye and saw her grin in anticipation, the blonde's intentions of not moving at all became clear when she said, "Oh, don't mind me."

Sakura's right eye twitched, a habit she wanted to get rid of badly as it only appeared when she was exasperated, fuming, or both. She let out a breath and shrugged off her white lab coat, "Let's go somewhere else."

Sakura didn't miss the pout Ino shot their way as Kakashi followed her out of the lab and down the hallway. As they walked, they tried to put an appropriate amount of distance between them, not enough to look like strangers but enough to look like friends.

Just friends.

As they strode through the labyrinthine and sometimes despicably tortuous hallways of the hospital, they couldn't help but detect the apprehensive stares they got from some of the staff and patients. Sakura resisted the urge to beat them all to a pulp.

Sakura took note of the rising humidity of the air when they exited through the front doors of the hospital and desperately tried to keep her eyes from wandering back to gawk at Kakashi.

Hey, this isn't awkward at all. Even Sakura's thoughts lied to her and she sneered at the ground as they aimlessly walked to an indefinite destination.

"So…" Sakura began, clasping her hands behind her back to conceal her anxious fidgeting.

Slowly, they came to a stop in the middle of the street and Kakashi sighed and faced her fully. "I talked to Genma." Kakashi said, looking straight into her beautiful jade eyes. "He told me what he remembered from last night."

Sakura's eyebrows rose in curiosity. Was Genma's recollection of the night the same as Ino's? Were they dependable? Were they just as embarrassing? "Ino, too." Sakura frowned at herself when she felt the familiar inconsistent thud of her heart in her ears. "What did Genma remember?"

Kakashi scratched the back of his neck, "Apparently we moved the party to my place," he considered his choice of words, trying to choose his sentence carefully so as to spare Sakura of any embarrassment. But he was never good with that sort of stuff. "We played strip poker."

Eighteen letters. Four words. One sentence.

That was all it took for Sakura to want to kill herself for what felt like the three hundredth time today.

"What?"

"We played-"

"I know what you said!"

"You asked-" Kakashi was cut off for the second time when Sakura held up a finger and inhaled deeply to try and calm her breathing.

"Okay," Sakura said, her voice coming out breathy and quiet, as if it was more to calm herself down than anything else. "According to Ino, we were 'all over each other' at Shishuya." Sakura curled her fingers into air quotation marks, blushing as she recalled what Ino had told her.

Kakashi's only visible eyebrow shot up as he looked at her. "What do you mean all over each other?"

Sakura glared at Kakashi, "I mean that we were groping each other without a care in the world."

Kakashi almost laughed. This was some situation he'd gotten himself into and with Sakura of all people? He must've done something really bad in his past life. "This isn't looking so good for us."

"Tell me about it."

Kakashi and Sakura stood in the middle of the street, ignoring the questioning glances of the people milling about. Sakura tried hard to think about that night, but the only thing she could remember was things before she got drunk. Everything else was just a black void in her memory. She raised her eyebrows at Kakashi and had to tilt her head a little to look straight into his stormy eye, "So, what's our next course of action, Captain?"

Though Kakashi smiled at Sakura, he couldn't help the nagging pit forming in his stomach at the fact that she'd called him that. Even hearing her add 'sensei' at the end of his name, which she sometimes did out of habit, made him cringe a little bit. It perfectly showed their relationship and understanding with each other before all this happened.

"Time for a bit of recon."

*.*

It was the busiest time of the day for Shushuya and as Kakashi and Sakura entered, they were lucky enough to find a small table for two, tucked away in the corner. The only problem was: it was too intimate.

The table was originally meant for couples, much to Sakura's dismay, and was the only table available to them. Thanks to Kakashi's exceptional luck with genetics, it couldn't be helped that his long muscular legs rubbed against her bare ones underneath the table.

"I find it hard to believe that we did any of the things Ino and Genma claim we did." Sakura said, crossing her arms over her chest. It was the truth. She really did. Sakura wasn't the type to publicly stick her hand down anyone's pants, let alone Kakashi's. Drunk or sober.

Kakashi felt the same. Though he had his fair share of drunken one-night stands, he remembered all of them. To an extent. He found it very uncharacteristic of him to forget it all, to forget if he ever really touched Sakura the way he's been wanting to since they woke up this morning.

"I agree, but we can't rule it out just by that alone. We need evidence." Kakashi frowned into his glass of water and swirled its contents around, her delicate floral scent mixed with vanilla assaulted his nose, making him want to squirm in his seat.

"So, we find whoever was working here last night and then what? Ask if we had sex on the table?" Sakura asked, raising an eyebrow. Sakura hated to have conversations with her friends without making a wise-crack at least once. It was a tendency she thoroughly enjoyed, one she picked up from the knuckle-head ninja himself.

The glass in Kakashi's surprisingly slender fingers stopped and she looked up at him to see a dark eye wide open in shock, before it narrowed. "And if the answer is yes?"

Sakura felt the warning signs of a flush creeping up her neck. It was so damn hard to read him with half his face covered, but the way his voice sounded- so flippant and smooth at the same time- she could only just pick out the faintest tone of desire. She didn't answer, she didn't want her attraction to get the better of her. Instead, she dropped her eyes to her own glass of water in front of her, the smallest hint of a smile on her pale pink lips.

It took almost all of Kakashi's self control to not reach his hand under the table and run it up her leg when it accidentally rubbed against his. He bit the inside of his cheek, trying to keep his only visible eye trained on her. He wondered if she was thinking the same thing he was; her perched on top of the very table they sat at with her legs wrapped around his waist. He imagined her back arched in ecstasy and head resting on his shoulder as they thrust against each other, the sound of his name on her lips as she screamed herself hoarse while he whispered dirtily into her ear all the different ways he was going to take her.

"Do you two need anything?" A voice asked, ripping Sakura and Kakashi from their dirty and sinful thoughts. "Wait a second, aren't you two from last night? How's that Naruto guy, is he okay?"

Sakura's eyes snapped to Kakashi, who looked at her just as fiercely. The way they looked at each other conveyed one simple, mutual message.

Bingo.

"Oh? Why wouldn't he be?" Sakura asked politely, shooting the waitress a charming smile.

The waitress was pretty, with dark eyes and matching hair that was piled on top of her head and secured with a chopstick. She raised an eyebrow at Sakura and smiled, "Well, he challenged that Hyuga boy - Neji, was it? - to a fight." She laughed, "I wish I could've seen it!"

Kakashi decided that it was time for him to jump in, "Why didn't you?"

The waitress, Naoko –as her name tag read- turned her attention to Kakashi, her eyes going wide. Sakura resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Ever since she could remember, Kakashi had always been a hit with the ladies. And you could only see his eye, for God's sakes! What could it possibly be that attracted girls to him just by looking at his half masked face?

Naoko cleared her throat, "He… the boss kicked your group out. There were too many of you and you were all drunk and a fight in here would've caused too much damage. Not to mention it was half an hour till closing time. So you… uh… you guys took it to the Training Grounds." Her cheeks flushed and Sakura crossed her arms over her chest, staring at her suspiciously.

"Is that so?" Kakashi mused, his eye tilting up at the corner. "Thank you, Naoko-san."

Naoko looked like she was in a trance when she smiled at Kakashi and scurried away, her skirt billowing out behind her. Sakura looked at Kakashi, who just rested his chin onto his fist, looking fine and dandy.

"So, seems pretty legitimate. Naruto always starts fights when he's drunk." Sakura said, taking a sip of water.

Kakashi watched her pink little tongue swipe at her bottom lip and subconsciously knocked his knee into the inside of her thigh. He didn't mean to, really, he didn't. But he couldn't help but like it.

It was at that moment that Kakashi Hatake knew- he was going to hell.

Sakura glanced at Kakashi from over the rim of her glass when she felt his knee press into her thigh, out of instinct, she snapped her legs shut. But that only made things worse. Sneaking a calm glance underneath the table, Sakura realized that she had –accidentally- encased Kakashi's knee in between her bare thighs.

Sakura bravely removed her eyes from their legs to his face and watched whatever she could see of his previously calm expression darken. "Neji must know what happened," she said, proud that her voice came out stronger and bolder than she felt.

Kakashi nodded quickly and ran a gloved hand through the messy and gravity-defying strands of his silver hair. "I heard he was out on an errand to one of the civilian villages, he won't be back until tomorrow."

Sakura sighed, "Well, shall we meet tomorrow then?"

Kakashi nodded, his attention purely on the pout of her soft pink lips and those alone as she spoke. He didn't even listen to her as she told him where she'd be, what she'll be doing and at what time they would see each other. Instead, he just stared at her lips. The whole time.