Itachi woke up with something very soft and warm pressed against his cheek. He blinked a couple of times before he noticed that it was Sakura's breast. His instinct was to extricate himself from her grasp, but he forced himself to remain still. Her breathing was slow and even. He could see from the window that it was still dark outside, though it had to have been close to dawn.

She had his head cradled against her chest, her arms wrapped around him tightly. He couldn't have moved without waking her up anyway. And, well, this wasn't the worst way to wake up. In fact, it was probably the most pleasant way Itachi had ever woken up before.

Itachi had never been the kind of man to live in the moment. He was always planning ahead. He didn't focus too much on his own pleasure or wanting more than what he had. But he would have given anything to fast-forward into the future – a future where he and Sakura were married and he could wake up wrapped in her arms like this every day.

Meeting her mother had not gone as smoothly as he had hoped, and he couldn't really blame her. Mebuki was worried about her daughter, afraid she was being manipulated into a marriage she didn't want. Itachi had started to feel that way himself. It was obvious that Sakura was a little freaked out by the idea of marriage, and unfortunately for Itachi, a marriage to him was kind of a big deal.

He was caught between a rock and hard place. He had already confessed both to himself and to Sakura that he loved her. He would do anything for her. He certainly wouldn't push her toward marriage and run the risk of scaring her off.

But what would he do when his year ran up and she still wasn't ready to marry him? The seat on the council aside, Itachi still had a duty to restore his clan. He owed that to Sasuke.

Sakura stirred next to him, mumbling something incoherent and shifting her leg down from its position hiked over his waist.

Would he give up his duty to his clan for her? Would she expect him to?

He didn't think she would do that to him, but he didn't know for sure. Sakura was headstrong and she knew what she wanted. And if she decided that she didn't want him, what would he do? Who would he marry? A stranger?

She stirred again, groaning loud enough that he could feel the vibrations in her chest against his cheek. She stretched out and Itachi felt more than he heard the pops in her spine.

"Good morning, Itachi-kun," she said and even though he couldn't see her face he could tell she was smiling.

"Good morning," he mumbled into her breast.

"I think that was the most restful night of sleep I've ever had," she said, combing her fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes, relishing in the feel of her fingers against his scalp. He never imagined such a simple gesture would feel so nice. "So this is what it will be like when we're married, huh?"

Itachi's heart constricted almost painfully in his chest. It had always been a matter of if they got married, not when. If she had accepted that they would definitely be married one day, did she feel trapped? Would she marry him because that was what she should do or because it was what she wanted to do?

"Sakura."

She kissed the top of his head before resuming her finger combing. "Itachi."

"You don't feel obligated to marry me, do you?"

This was too serious of a conversation to be having with his face pressed into a deliciously supple part of her anatomy, so he pulled himself away to look at her face. To his surprise, she laughed.

"Obligated?" she giggled. "I should be so lucky. Besides, if I don't marry you then someone else will and I'm sure as hell not going to let that happen. Like it or not, you're stuck with me, Itachi-kun."

"I'm serious, Sakura."

Angry hands shoved him down against his pillow and Sakura flung her leg over his torso, straddling him. "So am I," she said, her eyes bright with determination. "This is unfamiliar territory for both of us, so I completely understand why you would think that. But I'll put you at ease right now: I'm not going to string you along and then bail."

He didn't know how to respond to that, but it didn't feel as much like relief as he thought it should.

"You would be totally screwed," she continued. "If I waited the full year and then left you. You'd have to marry someone else, or not marry anyone at all and give up your council seat. It would push back the restoration of your clan. And you'd probably be devastated over losing me, which would make finding a new potential spouse even harder."

Itachi narrowed his eyes at her, contemplating whether or not to activate his Sharingan and scare her.

"But you don't have to worry about any of that stuff," she said, smiling like an idiot. "Because I love you and I'd be happy to be your wife."

He drank in the sight of her – her goofy grin and sleep mussed hair. Her eyes were slightly puffy but she was glowing nonetheless.

"You would?"

"Duh," she said, sliding off his lap and onto the floor. She bent over and picked up the shirt that had been wrapped around her face the night before and pulled it over her head. "Now come make me breakfast."

.

Itachi had a hard time with cooking breakfast. Itachi liked to cook and he was good at it, but Sakura made it very difficult. Sakura (whose cooking was mediocre at best) was insanely hungry, as she'd put it. He'd already burned one batch of eggs while he'd been distracted as she stood behind him, pressing teasing kisses to his bare back.

To assuage her grumbling stomach until he could finish, he had cut honeydew into small chucks for her. She sat on the counter next to the stove, munching happily on the melon while she watched Itachi push her eggs around the pan with a spatula.

"If you eat too much of that you won't be hungry anymore by the time I finish," he complained.

"Don't worry, Itachi-kun," she said. "I'll have plenty of room left."

He watched her pop another chunk into her mouth and lick her lips. He reached for the bowl and picked up a chunk of his own, but Sakura's hand around his wrist stopped him before he could put it in his mouth.

"That's mine," she said, and brought his hand to her mouth. She took the honeydew with her teeth, her lips grazing against his fingers. He shuddered and pulled his hand away, returning to the eggs before he burned them again.

But when his stomach growled, spurred by the delicious smell of the eggs, he reached for another chunk of melon. Sakura jerked the bowl away from him. "No way," she said. "This is mine."

He narrowed his eyes at her because it was most definitely not hers. He had paid for it. He had cut it up for her. The least she could do was share. But she only seemed amused by his exasperation and she giggled.

"Can I have some?" he asked, deciding to play nice.

She tapped a finger against her lips, pretending to consider his request. "Say the magic word."

"Please?"

"Okay," she conceded, picking up a piece of honeydew and holding it up to his lips. "Only because you asked so nicely."

He took the melon in his mouth, along with her finger, which he bit (gently, because he didn't want to hurt her). She shrieked and pulled her hand away, but when she inspected her finger more closely she only giggled in response.

"You're a real piece of work, hime," he said, scooping the finished eggs out onto a plate. "You know that?"

"Oh, really?" she said, still tittering and munching on her fruit.

When the eggs were no longer in danger of being burned, Itachi felt it was time to give her the appropriate payback.

"Yes, really," he said. "In fact, I don't think I made enough eggs for you. Maybe you should make your own while I eat these," he said, gesturing to the plated eggs. He took the eggs and sat down at the table. He took a bite and tried not to turn and face her while he chewed. He was sure she'd stomp over to him and demand her eggs, but he could hear no movement from her.

After a stressfully quiet moment, he heard Sakura approach softly and take the seat to his right. "Itachi-kun," she said sweetly. He turned to look at her. She had brought her bowl of honeydew. "Thank you for breakfast."

He eyed her while she tucked into her fruit again, appearing to have no desire for the eggs he'd cooked at her request. Feeling a little annoyed, he took another bite of egg and sulked.

Sakura giggled and scooted so she could lean against his shoulder.

"You're too easy to tease, Itachi-kun."

He grunted in response.

"Itachi-kun?"

He grunted again.

"Once we're married, can we get a dog?"

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. It was strange to hear her speak so frankly about marriage after he'd witnessed firsthand how much the idea freaked her out. Maybe she was starting to look forward to it, he thought. Maybe the idea didn't scare her so much anymore.

"I hate dogs," he answered. "How about a cat?"

"Yes!" she exclaimed, unbothered by his hate for dogs. "And we can name it Sasuke!"

Itachi chuckled and shook his head. He watched her take another bite of honeydew and he couldn't help the smile that seemed glued to his face.

"Hey, Itachi-kun?"

"Yes?"

"Do you want to spar with me?"

"Spar? With you?"

"Yeah, I've got a few new tricks I want to test out," she said. "Do you want to?"

"Can I use my Sharingan this time?"

She paused, considering her answer. "Yes, but only if you promise not to use it to figure out my sexual fantasies."

"Hmm, no deal," he answered, a smirk tugging at his lips. "That's the only thing I was interested in using it for."

She bursted with laughter, and if he hadn't been a shinobi it might have scared him a little. "I can just tell you if you really want to know, Itachi-kun."

He had a sudden suspicion that he didn't want to know. Though they had come close last night, they had only had sex the one time, and while Itachi was certainly looking forward to doing it again he was also a little apprehensive. Sakura had done most of the work last time. He wanted to be the one to take charge the next time they did it, but what if that wasn't what she wanted?

But curiosity got the better of him. "Tell me."

She took his hand in hers and pulled him out of his chair, dragging him to the front door. "Maybe after our spar, Itachi-kun," she said, giving him an eye-crinkling smile.

.

Itachi didn't really want to spar with Sakura, but he couldn't tell her that. It wasn't that he didn't think she was a worthy opponent. Truthfully, he was excited to see what new tricks she had up her sleeve.

But at the moment, Itachi had only one thing on the brain, and that was the way she looked wearing his clothes. Because she had slept over she hadn't brought any of her gear and Itachi had been gracious enough to allow her to wear his shirt. She had opted to wear yesterday's black spandex shorts and something about seeing her with the Uchiha crest on her back and sporting dark colors really got him going.

He didn't have a spare weapons pouch, but that seemed to suit Sakura just fine as her strength was, well, her strength. She sprinted around the private training field, punching the ground hard enough to send debris flying all around them. She knocked over trees, propelled herself into the air, and giggled the whole time. She wasn't attacking him, so he watched her show off with mild amusement before he preemptively halted her next ground strike with a kick to her stomach.

"That's enough, show-off," he said with an amused glare. "You're ruining my training grounds."

"Sorry," she said with a cheeky grin. "I'm just warming up."

He grunted. He launched a couple of shuriken at her and watched her dodge one and block the other with her bare wrist. He saw no blood on her skin, so he assumed she had used chakra to buffer the impact.

And then he waited. He was curious to see what she would do and he had no desire to fight her.

She seemed to realize this and had an almost lackadaisical approach to fighting him. She was smiling as she kicked up a huge chunk of the earth and kicked it toward him. He dodged it, but let it get close enough that he could feel the whoosh of it as it flew past him.

Sakura was not a long-range fighter, and though she was fairly skilled as escaping genjutsu, she would have a hard time getting out of his. And because he specialized in shuriken jutsu, she was not well matched with him.

Even with this knowledge, Itachi did not discredit her as an opponent. He knew that she had taken down Sasori. It would do him no good to underestimate her. But as far as he was concerned, this spar was for exploratory purposes only. He didn't care to win.

So he moved into her range. He lacked the chakra control that she had, so when she started to throw punches, he dodged them instead of blocking them. A caught fist would mean a broken hand. He watched with amusement as she threw blow after blow, a gleeful look on her face. She was having fun.

"Hit me back, Itachi-kun," she said, her smile never breaking.

He knew it was a trap, but he did it anyway. He swiftly brought his leg up to kick her in the chest, but as he predicted, she caught his ankle. Sakura had a natural athleticism and she wouldn't have needed chakra to hold his leg up in the air the way she was, but nonetheless, Itachi felt a spurt of chakra flow into his leg.

And then his leg was dead weight and uncontrollable. She let it fall to the ground with a shrill burst of laughter. His leg felt like pins and needles and because he could not control it (his muscles seemed to have stopped working entirely), he was forced to balance on one leg.

It was an interesting technique that could certainly buy her time in a sticky situation. He wondered how much of her chakra it used up. He wondered if she was limited to affecting only the parts of his body she touched. Could she stop his heart the same way? Could she render his entire body immobile?

He activated his Sharingan to watch her more closely. She jumped back away from him and retreated into the tree line. With his leg still useless, he couldn't do much to go after her, so instead he watched and waited.

He could see her perched on a tree branch and she smiled and winked at him in a way that he would have found infuriating if she had been anyone else.

He launched a fireball at her if only to remove her from the trees. The feeling began to return to his leg. He wondered if she had performed a weakened version of the jutsu or if she could permanently disable limbs if she so chose.

She jumped down to the grass and set her gaze on him, watching as he experimentally moved his leg. She did not seem surprised, so it must have been intentional.

Before he could regain full control of his leg, Sakura was attacking again. Her taijutsu was easily her best strength and even though Itachi could keep up with her, he found himself running out of breath. She was relentless with her attacks, kicks and punches flurrying around her. He dodged each one, catching it with his Sharingan with more than enough time to evade them.

But his leg was slowing him down. Eventually, he was able to move it properly again and with renewed confidence, he threw himself into their taijutsu dance. She seemed greatly amused by this and began to quicken her pace. He narrowed his eyes at her, slightly wounded that she would think she needed to go easy on him in any way.

With a little more aggression than was necessary, Itachi threw a particularly nasty punch at her face, which she caught with the palm of her hand. He had expected her to block it with her wrist as she had done with all the previous attacks, but when his knuckles connected with her palm he realized his mistake.

Instantly, his arm was useless.

"You should have known better, Itachi-kun," she said cheerily.

He pursed his lips. "Why can I not see when you're performing that jutsu?" he asked, his Sharingan wavering in the sunlight. "Are you not using chakra?"

She laughed, tossing her head back. His eyes narrowed further, un-amused. "You're just not looking hard enough, Itachi-kun."

He lunged at her, using his good arm to grab her neck and hold her, not tightly but firmly enough that she'd be hard pressed to get away. She grunted and aimed to sweep her legs underneath his, but he forced his knee between her legs and knocked her to the ground, hovering over her body and pressing down slightly on her neck.

He saw the breath leave her lungs with a whoosh when she hit the ground, but he didn't relent. Straddling one of her legs, he bore his eyes into her, letting the tomoe of his Sharingan spin. He was instantly annoyed when he saw the fear flash across her face. He thought they were past that by now, but to her credit she did not look away from him.

"Are you holding back?" he asked her. "Can you do worse things with that jutsu?"

"I can stop your heart if I'm touching you for long enough," she answered, confirming his suspicions. "It's easier if I touch your chest, but I can do it touching anywhere on your body."

"Let me see."

She let out an awful choking sound so he eased up on her throat a little bit but kept her pinned beneath him. "I'm not going to stop your heart, Itachi," she said. "It's too dangerous."

He grunted in response because he was sure she could restart it again, but he let it go.

However dangerous stopping his heart was, she seemed to have no trouble with external injuries because she shoved her open hand into his chest, much like she might have if she were healing an injury and extended five chakra scalpels into his pectoral muscle. He winced and leapt away from her, launching a barrage of shuriken in the process.

She was on her feet in seconds, dodging as best she could, but several shuriken hit her anyway. She lessened their impact with chakra and within seconds, the wounds were gone. She looked up at him with a trace of something unreadable in her eyes and it annoyed Itachi that there was something about her that he just couldn't place.

She raced toward him, attempting to put herself back in attack range, but he launched another fireball at her to keep her at bay. He winced against the pain that erupted in his chest as he inhaled – the scalpel wounds were deeper than he'd thought.

And then, through the smoke, he saw the glint of a senbon – a chakra senbon. So she had completed her technique. He dodged it easily, but applauded her effort. The smoke screen created by his fireball would have been the perfect cover if he had been anyone other than an Uchiha.

But then he felt a sharpness in the back of his calf. He looked down to find a chakra senbon embedded in his calf muscle. He watched it dissipate with confusion. She had been in front of him the whole time. He would have seen if she had created a shadow clone. How could she have thrown a senbon like that?

And then he felt her chakra, healing chakra. It was just like any other time she healed him, except he could distinctly feel the chakra flowing in from the point in his calf. The wounds on his chest began to disappear, fading away like they'd never been there in the first place.

He flicked his gaze to Sakura who was watching him with an infuriating smirk on her face.

But he couldn't blame her.

"How did you hit me from behind?" he asked.

"I threw two senbon," she said. "One to distract you and another with a chakra thread attached. While you dodged the first one, I used the thread to redirect the second one after it had gone past you."

"I didn't see the second one," he said skeptically.

"I threw it low. Senbon aren't dangerous unless they hit a vital point or are poisoned," she explained. "Even if you saw it, you probably wouldn't have dodged it. I wouldn't have been able to hit any of your vitals with it."

Itachi absently ran his hand over his chest where the wounds had been. He would have dodged it if he had seen it, but he hadn't and that really annoyed him. She wasn't supposed to be able to do things that he couldn't see. He should be able to see everything. That's what his bloodline limit was designed for.

"And you remotely healed me with it," he asserted.

"Yes," she said beaming with pride. "After I successfully completed the chakra senbon, I tried to figure out some more practical uses for it. I remember you suggesting poison and infection. I might go with both of those later on, but I figured this would be better suited for my role in combat. I can remain on the sidelines and out of danger while still assessing and doing some basic healing."

He drank in the sight of her in that moment. She probably had no idea how amazing she looked. The morning sun gilded her hair – a striking contrast against her dark clothing. Her stance was assertive and strong, her hip cocked to the side and an impossible brightness in her eyes. From this distance he could barely make out the pinkness of her lashes. She stared at him with unwavering confidence and it looked so good on her. She was capable and strong and he had a surge of affection for her that nearly took the breath from his lungs.

But Itachi was an opportunist and he couldn't let her get away with what she had done. He took advantage of her locked gaze, and with the surety that she had consented to it, he pulled her into a genjutsu.

Itachi had cast many genjutsu in all his years – nearly all of them had been designed to be painful or manipulative in some way. He had used genjutsu to lie to Sasuke and also to tell him the truth. He had used it on Yamato and Sachi to show them a beach – something calm and tranquil when everything around them was a constant swirl of terror.

But what could he show Sakura? He considered what would make Sakura happy. She had told him the happiest she had ever been – healing that damn patient for Tsunade. He didn't buy that for a second. But then what did make her the happiest? She seemed pretty happy now. She had seemed happy to boss him around in his own kitchen and stretch out in his bed like it was her own.

But it would be hers too soon, he supposed. And was that what could make her happy? Was it him? He could show her what their marriage could be like. He could show her a houseful of Uchiha children – ones with her perfect chakra control and his bloodline limit. But would that freak her out?

Even as he pulled her into the genjutsu, he was still unsure.