With each passing day, Sakura grew more worried about the threat Kabuto posed to Konoha. She continued to go through the samples she had collected from the bunker each day and each new bit of information brought the sword of Damocles a little bit closer to Konoha's proverbial neck.

He had created a disease that could be used as a weapon, one that could spread nearly instantaneously through the whole village should they be subjected to it. It was alarming to say the least, which was why Sakura had gone to Tsunade to suggest that a team be formed to track him down and kill him before he could start his biological warfare.

Shikamaru had been brought to the impromptu meeting, because Tsunade trusted his judgment.

"You need a team that can be immunized," he said. "One that has substantial knowledge of medical jutsu, diseases, and poisons that Kabuto might use against them. And also someone strong enough to defeat him."

Tsunade and Sakura nodded in agreement.

"So obviously Sakura should be on the team," he supplied. "She has been dealing with this particular case the longest and is the most knowledgeable. I would say Shizune would also be a good addition."

"Not Shizune," Tsunade said. "I need her here. I can't have both her and Sakura gone at the same time."

"Naruto?" Shikamaru suggested. "He's fought Kabuto before."

"That's not a bad idea," Sakura interjected. "Maybe this should be a Team 7 mission. Sasuke knows quite a bit about Kabuto as well."

"I agree," Tsunade said. "The three of you will go. But we need a lead on where he might be hiding out."

"A separate tracking team might be useful," Shikamaru suggested. "They can track and locate Kabuto and then send for Team 7 once they've found him."

Tsunade hummed in agreement. "I'll send Team 8," she said. "Sakura, inform Naruto and Sasuke. You'll need to be ready to leave at a moment's notice. Shikamaru, fetch Team 8 for me."

"Yes, Tsunade-sama," they said in tandem.

.

"Kabuto again?" Sasuke said with a roll of his eyes.

"This is serious," Sakura said as she popped candy into her mouth. She lounged back against Naruto's couch, stretching her legs out and resting her feet on his coffee table. "Kabuto has weaponized a seriously lethal disease. If it reaches Konoha, we'll all die. There's nothing we can do about it."

Sasuke eyed her up and down, probably reconciling the staid nature of her words with the casual way she was sprawled over Naruto's couch. "Can't you just come up with a vaccine for it?" he asked.

Naruto leaned forward, nodding with agreement. "Yeah, do what you did in Toyeiki," he said, nudging her hip with his elbow.

She glared at Sasuke. "It's not that simple," she said. "It took me months to come up with a vaccine in Toyeiki and I was already immune to that disease. This one is more dangerous. It will be specifically designed to infect shinobi."

"So what now?" Naruto asked. "We just wait until we get the word from Team 8 to move out?"

"That's all we can do," she said. "Except, I want to teach the both of you how to use chakra to burn off an infection. Just in case. Sasuke, you can just copy my technique with your Sharingan. Naruto, I'll have to teach it to you the old fashioned way."

Sasuke leaned back against the frame of his chair, looking rather bored. But a second later Sakura noticed his eyes had bled red and were watching her and Naruto with a detached sort of focus.

"Alright, Naruto," she said. "I don't have an infection to pass to you, so I'm just going to show you what to do with your chakra."

Sakura stayed at Naruto's apartment for several hours showing Naruto how to use chakra to burn infections. He wasn't precise enough with his chakra control, so unfortunately for the both of them, the lesson took a lot more time that she hoped it would.

But fortunately, Sasuke seemed to have gotten over his irritability and started to incessantly rib Naruto for his lack of skill. Sakura didn't feel that his ribbing was entirely necessary, especially since Sasuke would likely have had trouble learning the technique if he hadn't been able to use Sharingan.

However, Naruto was a good sport about it – a far cry from the boy he used to be, the one who responded quite angrily to taunts from his brooding teammate. In fact, Sakura noticed that Naruto seemed to be enjoying the teasing.

And soon enough she was laughing along with them.

After the treacherous lesson had ended (with the promise that there would soon be another one), Naruto made dinner for the three of them and they ate and laughed together and Sakura felt an intense swelling in her heart.

Sasuke seemed to be over his anger toward her, though she was careful not to bring up Suigetsu or Juugo. It was nice to just hang out with her teammates with nothing else in the way.

After helping clean up the mess, Sakura decided to head out and she hugged Naruto and even Sasuke, who allowed but did not return her hug.

She wondered, as the door clicked shut behind her, if Sasuke slept at Naruto's often. He was almost always there and she knew he had to have spent a least a few nights there before.

It was getting late and she should be heading to bed soon.

But she realized that if Sasuke slept at Naruto's apartment, then Itachi was alone at the Uchiha compound…

It was an impulsive decision, but she found herself walking toward Itachi's house. It was probably rude to show up so late in the evening with no warning, but she didn't think Itachi would mind and it had been several days since she had seen him.

Meeting her mother had not gone quite as smoothly for Itachi as Sakura would have liked. She made it clear to her mother that she and Itachi would do what they wanted and that it didn't really matter what her opinion on the situation was. But even as she said it, she knew it was only a bluff. Sakura valued her mother's opinion and wanted her to like Itachi.

Liking him wasn't really the problem, though. Who wouldn't like Itachi? The problem (the really annoying, omnipresent problem) was the marriage deadline. Mebuki and Kizashi were not fond of the idea that their little girl was basically being forced into a marriage and refused to see it as anything other than a manipulative move on Itachi's part.

Crestfallen and disappointed, Itachi had walked home alone that day after meeting her mother and Sakura had not seen him since.

So when Sakura knocked on his door she was hoping that he would be in a better mood than he had been that day.

She heard an awkward shuffling on the other side of the door and she was both bemused and flustered when he opened the door wearing nothing but pair of what looked like Sasuke's old shorts. She caught herself staring at him, his naked torso and the sweat that clung there mesmerizing her. He had a freckle on his ribcage that she had never noticed before and she found herself wanting to reach out and touch it.

"Sakura," he said, breaking her out of her trance. "It's late. What are you doing here?"

A little too late, Sakura realized that he might have had company. She shouldn't have just come over to his home unannounced – it was rude.

And then the thought of Itachi having late-night, sweaty, half-naked company made the tips of Sakura's ears burn and she felt a sick, cloying jealousy take hold of her throat.

"I'm sorry," she croaked, taking a step back away from the door. "I honestly don't know why I came here."

He looked faintly amused as he grabbed her wrist and pulled her over the threshold. "Come inside," he said sternly, "Don't just stand there."

She allowed him to pull her inside, and then distantly noticed that his arms and shoulders were slightly pink from a sunburn.

"You look upset," he noted.

"You look sunburnt."

"Yeah," he said, eyeing her with suspicion. She could see that he didn't like that she had ignored his unasked question, but she certainly wasn't going to tell him that she was jealous of the mystery woman who had taken off his clothes and made him all sweaty. "I was training all day in the sun. I was just about to take a cold shower."

Oh.

"Are you upset?" he asked.

"No."

He gave her a look like he didn't believe her. "Alright," he said deliberately slow. "I'm going to take a shower. Do you want me to make you some tea?"

She shook her head. She felt a bit foolish for having been jealous in the first place, and also for showing up at his house without telling him. His generosity made her feel guilty and his near nudity made her feel… well, other things.

"Are you hungry?" he asked. "I can make you something to eat."

"I'm not hungry."

He pressed his lips together in a thin line, clearly annoyed and unsure of what to do. He wouldn't kick her out, Sakura knew. And he didn't want to leave her out here with nothing to do while he took a shower.

"I'll just be on my way, then," she said in her best attempt to extricate herself from the horrible situation she'd put them both in.

"Sakura," he said, stopping her in her tracks. Her hand hovered over the doorknob. "Why did you come here?"

She turned back around to face him and was surprised to find that he had moved closer to her. He stood close enough that she could reach out and touch the freckle if she wanted to. And she kind of did.

Tentatively, she reached out her hand and pressed the tip of her finger into his skin where the freckle was. She watched the muscles in his stomach contract before she pulled her hand away. She chanced a look up at his face, feeling rather foolish still. He looked amused.

"I don't know," she answered honestly. "My feet just took me here."

He chewed his lower lip pensively, and though Sakura had never considered that such an action could be erotic, she felt a flash of heat ignite in her gut. She wanted to bite his lip like that, or maybe let him bite hers…

"Do you want to stay the night?" he asked, and to Sakura's great amusement he looked nervous.

Sakura nodded with a little more enthusiasm than was probably necessary.

"Okay," he said with a shy smile that made the heat in her gut spread. "Let me take a quick shower. Make yourself at home."

Before he could walk away from her, Sakura put her hands on his waist (a safe, unburned location) and pressed a kiss to his lips. He responded immediately, holding her against him and threading his fingers into her hair.

She had expected and intended for the kiss to be chaste. She didn't want to get him riled up and then send him off the shower alone. She took the opportunity, though, to heal his sunburn so that his shower wouldn't have to be cold.

"I'm sorry for inviting myself over," she said to him once they had broken apart.

He glanced down at his arms and then his shoulder, inspecting his newly healed skin. "I'm always happy to see you, Sakura," he said.

His words warmed her a little and she felt herself blushing. Gently, she pushed him away from her. "Go take your shower," she said. "I'll just be snooping through all your stuff."

He eyed her warily, but he was smirking.

Once he had safely disappeared into the bathroom and she could hear the water running, Sakura, true to her word, slipped into his bedroom. She didn't actually intend to snoop through his things, but if she was going to spend the night here she would need something to change into. And she knew he had a penchant for her wearing Uchiha colors.

She shuffled through his wardrobe, looking for something that would be suitable to sleep in, but also a little sexy.

Which was pretty difficult because what looked sexy on Itachi looked like a garbage sack on her. Most of his clothes were standard issue shinobi pants and mesh shirts. Nothing that screamed sexy.

But while she could still hear the water running, Sakura tried on a lot of his clothes, giving herself a fashion show. She made a mental note to buy him some clothes that weren't black or navy, because wow his wardrobe was depressing.

Eventually, she settled on one of the shirts she had given him so long ago when he had first come back to Konoha.

It was hard to believe that it had been nearly a year since he had come back. He was such an integral part of her life now – she couldn't imagine him not being around. She had been so afraid of him that day she had seen him with two children outside Toyeiki. So many horrific things had gone through her mind. Her life had flashed before her eyes because surely he would kill her.

And yet here she was now wearing his clothes and sleeping in his bed. Here she was abandoning her love for Sasuke for that last person she ever expected to.

"I really thought you were joking when you said you were going to snoop through my things."

Sakura whirled around, caught by surprise. She hadn't even noticed the water shut off. What a lousy ninja she was…

"I wasn't snooping," she said defensively. "I was looking for something to wear."

His eyes roved over her appreciatively and she returned the gesture, noticing that he was wearing only a towel and his hair hung damp and loose down his back. She let out an impressed whistle and gave him a lecherous grin.

"I see you found something suitable," he said, either oblivious or willfully ignorant of her blatant appreciation for his near nakedness.

"I see you did, too."

"It appears that someone has strewn all my clothes about," he said. "Otherwise I would be properly dressed."

Feeling bold, she took a step toward him and lifted her hand to his face. She could see beads of moisture against his eyebrow so she ran the pad of her thumb over it gently. "I'm sorry, Itachi-kun. I'll clean it up."

He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead and then bent down to pick up a pair of pants from the floor. "You can clean it up tomorrow," he said. "I'm tired. We should go to bed."

Sakura blinked. At some point in her growing up, the knowledge that men craved sex had been ingrained into her brain. Men not only wanted sex a lot, but they wanted it more than women did.

But Sakura very clearly wanted sex more than Itachi did, and she didn't know whether that meant that something was wrong with her or something was wrong with him.

Itachi circumvented her and pulled the covers away from his bed. She turned to look at him to see if he would change in front of her. She had already seen him naked, of course, but Itachi seemed like the type to prefer to change in privacy. He surprised her when he lifted her up off the ground and tossed her onto the bed unceremoniously.

"Stay here," he said. "I'll be right back."

A little chuffed about being tossed around like a doll, Sakura scoffed. She had been right about him, but she felt no pleasure in it.

"Wait," she commanded. "Come here first."

He approached her and she could tell he was expecting a kiss. But when he came close enough, Sakura yanked his towel away from him. Itachi was a ninja, though, and he caught her wrist as she was pulling away. She let go of the towel and it landed on her legs. She could feel its dampness on her and the urge to look at what it had just been covering was strong, but she looked up at his face instead.

His eyes were blood red and the tomoe were spinning and for the first time in a very long time, Sakura felt truly afraid of him. She didn't look away, though, because she knew that he wouldn't hurt her. He was still gripping her wrist tightly and she could see that his jaw was clenched.

"I'm sorry," she said in a low whisper. "I just—"

He cut her off with a searing kiss. She gasped into his mouth and moved her free hand to his neck, but he caught it with his other hand and pushed her down to the bed, pinning her hands to the mattress beside her head.

Immediately Sakura felt a whoosh of heat spread in her chest and pleasant tingling sensation along her scalp. She arched her back, pushing her hips up into the air. Itachi stood next the bed, but as soon as her hips were raised he straddled her, using the weight of his body to keep her still.

She writhed under him and tried to buck her hips again, but he remained still. He broke their kiss and pulled away from her.

"Why did you do that?" he asked.

"I didn't want you to get dressed."

He looked at her unblinkingly for a moment and she would have given anything to know what he was thinking just then.

She took the opportunity to study his Sharingan more deeply. The tomoe were still spinning and she wondered if that meant he was using some kind of jutsu on her. She felt normal, but if she were under a genjutsu she would never know. She could still feel his legs on either side of her and remembering that he was naked, she glanced down at him and noticed that he was hard.

With as much time as they spent together, Sakura felt like she understood Itachi and his reactions to things pretty well. He would be embarrassed, maybe even upset. She had yanked his towel off him and given him a boner, so she couldn't really blame him.

But when she looked up at his face, he was expressionless still, tomoe spinning. Still pinning her hands down, he tightened his thighs around her hips and leaned down again, kissing her roughly and demandingly.

Itachi was the only person who had ever kissed her before, and he had never kissed her like this. It was not gentle or tender in any way. Feeling a fresh wave of arousal tighten in her core, Sakura bucked into him again, desperate for even the tiniest bit of contact to relieve some of that intense pressure.

She felt him flinch and she thought she must have hurt him, but he continued to kiss her. She could hardly keep up with him. But god, it felt so good. She could feel her pulse skyrocketing and her skin felt tingly and electric. She bucked again, more frantically this time.

He released one of her arms so he could grab her hip and force it back down to the bed. She groaned and reached forward with her now free hand and grabbed his hair at the nape of his neck so she could pull him back down into a kiss. He resisted her with a shake of his head and squeezed his fingers against her hipbone.

"Just be still," he said lowly.

Instantly she went limp, releasing his hair and letting her arm fall down beside her head again. He hovered over her, watching her with red eyes. She was panting and she felt ridiculous about it while Itachi looked calm and collected as ever. His lips were slightly swollen and his skin was flushed. A drop of water clung precariously at the tip of his bangs until it finally detached itself and splashed onto Sakura's cheek. She flinched and reached her hand up to brush it away, but Itachi caught her wrist and pressed it firmly back down to the mattress.

Sakura had a sudden odd feeling, a strange anxiety that clawed at her throat. Itachi had never acted this way before.

"Am I in a genjutsu?"

His eyes stopped spinning and she watched them bleed back into coal. He swallowed hard and let go of her wrists, sitting back on his heels.

"Of course not," he said, his eyes bright with concern and a little irritation. "Did you think you were?"

She sat up a little, leaning against her elbows. "Your tomoe were spinning," she explained defensively because he seemed a bit offended. "I didn't know."

"They were?"

She nodded.

"I wouldn't have been upset, you know," she said. "If I was in a genjutsu. I wouldn't have been mad at you."

"I promised you I wouldn't do that without your permission," he said.

"You have my permission."

His gaze softened. He bit his lip again with apprehension and raked his hair back away from his face. He looked so boyishly charming that she wanted to sit up and kiss him, but she stayed still.

He let out a deep sigh. "I apologize for scaring you," he said.

"I wasn't scared," she lied.

He gave her a stern look. "I could see that you were," he said, tapping his temple.

"Well, you were definitely a bit more… aggressive than you usually are," she said cautiously. "But it was pretty hot."

The corners of his mouth quirked up slightly, not quite a smile but better than the nervous expression he'd worn before. Encouraged, she pulled herself up and kissed his mouth chastely.

"You're really hot," she said, watching his face carefully to see his reaction. "I bet women throw themselves at you all the time."

She didn't know if that was true or not, but Sasuke had his own fan club, so she assumed Itachi would, too. Predictably, Itachi's cheeks flushed. He was eyeing her with bemused curiosity, and again she wished she knew what he was thinking.

"But I'm the only one who gets to do this," she continued, leaning forward again to press a slightly less chaste kiss to his lips again.

When she pulled away she noticed his eyes were closed and he quickly grabbed her hair at the back of her head and pulled her back into a kiss before she could lie back down. He released her hair and slid his palm down to her back, pressing her closer to him. She could feel his other hand fiddling with the hem of her shirt (his shirt), so she pulled away from him again and grabbed the collar of his shirt at the back of her neck, intending to yank it over her head the way he had the night of the clan meeting.

But it was caught on something (her head, probably), resulting in the shirt being wrapped snugly around her face. In a more normal attempt at removing the shirt, she wormed her hands up through the bottom hole and tugged it off her with an irritated huff.

Itachi was laughing at her and his eyes had reverted back to their Sharingan, presumably to record her humiliation forever. She could feel her hair sticking out in all directions so she smoothed it down with her palms, hoping the action would hide the hot blush developing in her cheeks.

"It's an unfamiliar shirt," she said as if that explained why she, a shinobi – a jonin at that, had gotten her head stuck in a shirt.

"Yes, we all know how tricky unfamiliar shirts can be."

Finally confident enough to meet his gaze again, she sent a glare at him, but it melted immediately when she saw the boyish grin on his face. He looked so young, so happy. Sakura couldn't recall ever seeing him look so content. If she had known that all she had to do to make him that way was get her head stuck in something, she'd have done it a long time ago.

"Don't mock me," she said sassily, though she knew he was only teasing her.

"I'd never mock you, hime," he said reverently.

"Sure," she said sarcastically, poking his chest with her finger. She watched his eyes dip down to her chest and linger there for a second before he met her eyes again. "You just happened to activate your Sharingan so you can replay my shame over and over again in your head."

He caught her hand and held it, grinning at her with ridiculously sexy charm. "No, I activated my Sharingan because there's a pretty girl naked in my bed."

"I'm a woman, thank you very much."

He leaned forward and buried his face in her neck, not kissing her but letting his lips brush across that particularly sensitive swath of skin. He hummed against her throat, letting his fingers trail down her arms and come to a stop at her hips. "Yes, you are," he agreed. "A very pretty one."

She tilted her head to give him better access. He trailed the tip of his nose over her skin, his breath ghosting across her neck and giving her goose bumps.

"I'm glad you came over, Sakura," he murmured into the shell of her ear. "Even if you did come over uninvited and mess up my room and take my towel."

She smacked him playfully on the arm and then shut her eyes and whimpered when she felt his lips press firmly at the junction of her neck and jaw. "I'll clean up your room, Itachi-kun," she breathed.

"Oh?" he asked, pulling away from her. "What about my towel, hmm? Are you going to put it back on me?"

"You'd be hard-pressed to find me trying to cover you up, Itachi-kun," she said. "You should be naked all the time."

"I'll consider it."

She giggled and they sank down into his sheets together.