When Sakura slowly returned to wakefulness that morning, she became dimly aware of how comfortable she was. Despite not feeling the familiar sensation of her duvet on top of her or her futon beneath her, instead being met by the odd sensation of the soft tatami mats pressed against her side, she was firmly wrapped up in something unbelievably warm.

As she inched towards consciousness, she became more aware of her surroundings. She could feel that her cheek was pressed against something soft yet unyielding and an unknown weight was pressed on top of her head. The warmth cradled her to it, her own body wrapped around it and holding it to her as tightly as it held her. She basked in a scent that reminded her distinctly of a bonfire and she found herself struggling to fully return to wakefulness after first emerging from sleep wrapped up so comfortably.

When Sakura gently shifted as she began to stir, the warmth tightened around her and pulled her more fully against it. Still caught in the throes of sleep, she sighed back against the source of her comfort, nestling back into its embrace and back into her dreams.

She drifted in and out of her blissful state, lulled by the steady thrum of a strange yet familiar music against her ear. The gentle song did little to help her finally awaken, instead soothing her and drawing her back into sleep. It was only when her curiosity at the song finally began to surface that she finally awoke enough to realize her lullaby was a heartbeat.

With that knowledge came the abrupt realization that the warmth she had been wrapped up in, the being that she had been - and still was - fiercely cuddling, was breathing.

Sakura's eyes snapped open immediately, her entire body tensing as blissful sleep rapidly made way for alarm. She realized that her cheek was firmly pressed against a very solid chest, the source of her lullaby. She realized that the warmth that was wrapped around her and that kept her secured to this person's chest was a pair of arms. She realized how she had tangled herself around this person, one of her legs hooked over their thigh and dragging her skirts up precariously high as one of their legs pressed between her knees.

With her heart now racing in her chest and with a crippling headache greeting her as if in punishment, she was vaulted fully into wakefulness. A state where the memories of the night before came rushing back and where she suddenly realized exactly whose arms she was wrapped up in.

At Sakura's sudden tensing, Madara's breathing stopped, his arms stiffening around her. There were a few silent moments where she could feel as his heartbeat grew in it's pace against her ear, nearly matching the speed of her own. Slowly and cautiously, he pulled away from her, his arms sliding out from around her so he could perch on his elbow above her. The only thing that prevented her shiver as his hands slipped across her back was the demanding pain rapidly building behind her eyes.

Sakura, taking a few breaths to steel her nerves, finally peered up at the set of widened eyes staring down at her. They stared at one another unblinkingly for a long moment, heat rapidly flooding both of their cheeks.

"Sakura…" Madara mumbled, his voice still heavy with sleep.

"Good morning," she squeaked in response, her cheeks burning at the sound of his deep tone of voice.

She quickly broke eye contact, removing her arm from where it had been tossed around his middle. Clearing his throat, he pulled away, allowing her to slide out of his embrace. She unhooked her leg from over him as subtly as she could, every fiber of his pants brushing against the bare skin of her inner thigh feeling like a scalding hot brand.

As Sakura turned away, attempting to right her skirt as discreetly as possible, the change in position only enhanced the now throbbing pain behind her eyes. Her hands came up to her head in a combination of pain and embarrassment. When she shyly glanced towards Madara from behind her hands and noticed he was now sitting upright with the bridge of his nose pinched between his fingers, she could tell he was suffering the same fate as her.

She glanced over at Izuna who still sat in the exact position from the night before, his cheek flat against the surface of her table. She noticed that Kurumi was gone, the summon likely having returned to her own world at some point that night.

In between thoughts of how grateful she was that Izuna hadn't woken up before Madara and her and witnessed them cuddling on the floor and concern that the mischievous summon Kurumi very well had, Sakura thought of how Izuna would likely be in the same state as them when he finally woke up.

She avoided looking at either of the Uchiha brothers any longer as she finally dragged herself to her feet and into her kitchen. Hidden behind her half closed fusuma, she came to a stop before the cupboard which she used to store her medications and began her search for a tincture which would help with their hangovers.

As Sakura blearily pawed through the cupboards containing all the medications she had made, she quietly berated herself. She had drank far too much that night, quickly getting too far gone despite speeding up her own metabolism to more rapidly burn off the alcohol. She lamented how she had nearly abandoned her normally tightly leashed inhibitions and how she had made a fool of herself the night previous.

Pushing aside a variety of vials and bottles to the side with gentle clinks of glass on glass, Sakura thought of how she had flopped onto the floor behind Madara to braid his hair - a pathetic excuse just to touch him. She cringed as she remembered how she had tried to convince him to trade hair of all things as she had blissfully played with his ebony locks. She hoped he had been too drunk to remember her fingers straying off course to explore the lines of his shoulder blades and the tightly coiled muscles she had found there.

Sakura prayed she hadn't ruined their friendship in her drunken state. Nearly the entire time she had been braiding his hair, Madara had been tense. She was positive she had upset him even farther when she had accidentally yanked on his hair as it took him a long moment to speak after she had apologized. He hadn't even acknowledged her apology at all...

Pausing in her search, she thought of his exploration of her hand the night before, of the sensation of his calloused fingertips mapping each and every scar and crease of her palm. With an embarrassed flush, she dropped her forehead against the edge of the shelf.

She had been so out of control that she had nearly kissed him...

She had been breathless when Madara had explored her hand but, when he had threaded their fingers together, she had forgotten how to breathe entirely. When he had turned to face her, obviously out of concern for her odd behavior, they had been so close that their noses had nearly touched.

Sakura remembered how mesmerized she had been by his slowly spinning tomoe and how she had been incrementally closing the distance between them, thinking of nothing but finally satisfying her desires and kissing the man she had fallen in love with.

Just the thought of that moment had her heart racing once again.

And then Madara had broken eye contact and roped his arm around her shoulders, effectively rebuffing her would be affections.

Sakura thudded her forehead against the shelf as embarrassment tensed all the muscles in her body. What an idiot she had been. Certainly enough of one to greedily take advantage of Madara's embrace, curling up against him like a kitten desperate for affection. Good gods, he was probably horrified to have woken up with her wrapped around him like a damn starfish…

She withheld the groan of humiliation building in her chest as she continued to dig through her bottles of medication only to find none of the one she was looking for. It was then that she remembered how she had tried to make a new batch the day before her birthday and how they had come out so poorly that they had gone into the trash.

While it may be an unnecessary drain on her chakra, the least she could do was tend to all of their hangovers after they had gone through the trouble of celebrating her birthday. It was the least she could do as an apology to Madara after offending him so many times in her floundering, drunken state.

Sakura shuffled away from her medicine cabinet and towards her kitchen cupboards, intending to at least make some tea for them all. She made quick but sloppy work of setting up her tea kettle above her barely smoldering hearth, each clang of the metal pot sounding like an explosion to her frazzled and throbbing brain. She rekindled the fire purely on muscle memory, returning it to its usual glory.

As she waited for the water to boil, she lifted her hands, glowing green with healing chakra, to her head to begin to soothe the pain clawing at the insides of her skull. By the time the water was ready, the sharp ache behind her eyes had subsided but the humiliation still remained.

She unhooked the kettle and brought it, as well as the cups and tea leaves, to the table in her living room that both Uchiha brothers now sat at. Izuna remained blissfully unconscious with his face plastered to the table top, completely unaware of the world around him or the headache that was waiting for him, while Madara was nearly folded over the low table, his forehead cradled in his hand and his eyes shut.

When Sakura set the kettle on the table a bit more roughly than she had intended, the elder cringed as if wounded. The younger, however, jerked upright with a gasp of air only drop his face into his hands with a groan.

"Sweet gods, why…" Izuna whined, his hands muffling his voice.

"Please don't speak…" Madara muttered in response, shooting a weak glare at his younger brother through his long bangs.

As Sakura quietly poured them all cups of tea, Izuna tilted his head to squint at his brother.

Despite the pain undoubtedly coursing through his head in time with his heartbeat, he had the strength to chuckle, even if it was with a wince. "Lovely braid, brother."

Madara used his free hand to pat at his hair and to bring his still braided locks over his shoulder. He squinted at the complex braid, his expression a combination of confusion and discomfort. "What…"

"It's called a fishtail braid," Sakura explained in a soft voice as she went about picking up the dishes of sake, some still full, and replacing them with cups of hot tea, "My friend taught me all kinds of braids when we were kids."

"When did you braid his hair?" the young clan head asked, sitting up just enough to take his cup into his hands.

"Sometime after you passed out during the competition," she returned with a teasing grin before scooting closer to Madara.

The elder Uchiha eyed her curiously from beneath his bangs, his own cup loosely cradled in his hands, as she settled down next to him.

"My way of, er… apologizing," Sakura muttered, unable to meet his eyes, as she raised her hand, already glowing green with chakra.

"Apologizing…?" he grumbled in response, his eyebrows coming together in confusion.

"Yes, um... Sorry. And thank you both for coming over last night," she explained, quickly changing the topic. She was grateful that Izuna had still been sleeping when Madara and her had woken up and she didn't want to explain exactly why she was apologizing with said younger brother now fully conscious and watching them both curiously.

Madara nodded almost imperceptibly in response, gazing into his cup as she gingerly placed her hand against the side of his head. She made quick work of his headache, watching as his pained expression faded away.

Once done, Sakura pulled her hand away and instructed, "Drink some of that or it'll come back."

As Madara took a sip from the cup still cradled in his hand, Izuna eyed them both with his all too perceptive gaze. Thankfully, however, he said nothing of the silent tension between her and his brother. Instead, he waited patiently for Sakura to settle next to him and repeat the same process on him.

"Wow, that's a handy trick," Izuna commented once Sakura had finished, already following her previous instructions by taking a drink from his tea.

"One of the more unusual medical techniques. I can also speed up the body's processing of alcohol to sober up quicker. I wasn't kidding when I told you my mentor was a drunk," she explained with a shrug, settling back into her own seat and picking up her steaming cup.

"That explains it then!" Izuna declared suddenly, shooting her a dirty look and pointing at her in accusation, "You cheated during our game last night, didn't you?"

Sakura hid her smile in the rim of her drink, taking a slow sip and shrugging noncommittally. "I could teach you, if you want."

The younger brother's ire faded as curiosity got the best of him. "You could?"

"Yes. Well, maybe... It depends on whether or not you have an aptitude for it," she explained, grateful for the conversation with Izuna to buffer the awkwardness between her and Madara.

"I might take you up on that," Izuna huffed after a moment, abandoning his previous upset as he took another deep sip from his tea.

As the silence dragged on, Izuna's eyes flicked between Sakura and Madara suspiciously. The lack of conversation, and the fact they both refused to look at one another, was far from usual for the both of them. Despite Sakura's hope that he couldn't, the observant Uchiha could tell that something was amiss.

"Are you alright, brother?" he commented in a tone that spoke more than his simple words.

"Hm?" Madara started, lost in thought, before quickly tacking on, "Ah, yes, fine."

Izuna eyed his brother suspiciously for a long moment but didn't press, instead turning his gaze back to Sakura.

"We should probably return to our home. It's bad enough we stayed the night," he sighed, finishing off his drink in one long gulp.

"Why is it bad you slept over?" Sakura asked curiously, one eyebrow quirked, as she lifted her own cup to her lips.

"Because the rest of the clan is going to think Madara and I have entered into a polyamorous relationship with you," Izuna explained bluntly, making Sakura choke on her tea.

"W-what!?" she sputtered in response, her cheeks rapidly heating up until they nearly matched the color of her hair, "People are going to-they'll think that we were-we were taking turns or something?!"

"Or something," he replied simply as Madara immediately placed his face in his hand to hide his own reddening face.

"Oh gods, go. Go go go, before people notice!" Sakura hissed, making a frantic waving motion with her hands.

"It's the afternoon. Everyone knows by now. We've probably already missed a few messengers and..." Izuna started before his eyes widened with a sudden realization, "We really must leave."

He stood quickly, Madara following suit after finishing the final sip of his tea. As Izuna hurried to fetch his shoes, he tossed a "Happy birthday again, Sakura," over his shoulder.

The elder Uchiha, however, lingered next to the table, considering his parting words.

"Happy birthday, Sakura," Madara started, bringing Sakura back to the night before when he had whispered those same words into the crown of her head, "And I apologize as well."

He turned on his heel without another word, striding out of the room and towards the front door to collect his shoes.

As Sakura heard her front door slide shut, signaling the brothers had left, she immediately dropped her face into her hands in embarrassment. Now, not only had she humiliated herself in her drunken state the night before but now her patients were going to think she was some kind of seductress having three-ways with the clan heads.

She finally allowed herself to release a humiliated groan as she tugged at her tangled locks.

The brothers rapidly made their way towards their home, moving quickly to avoid any contact with other members of their family. While they both knew that there would be backlash for their drunken mistake, they wanted to avoid an unwanted confrontation in the middle of their village while still wearing their rumpled clothes and reeking of sake.

The inevitable berating from the clan elders would be painful enough when they finally came to input their unwanted opinion, let alone with an audience. The elders may be a highly respected and intelligent lot, only having survived into their advanced age due to their skill, but they were also unbearably haughty and distrustful of outsiders.

An encounter with them was best put off for as long as possible, especially when something had occurred that was an affront to their values.

As the brothers tried to quietly enter their home through the side concealed by flowering azaleas, two middle aged maids dutifully scrubbing the engawa perked up from their work to give them both odd stares. Their curious gazes flicked from Izuna to Madara before drifting down Madara's back, following the intricate braid trailing down his back. Madara shot them a glare and the two both immediately returned to their work, pretending as if they hadn't seen anything although knowing smirks quirked the edges of their lips.

As the clan heads slid open a shoji door and entered into their home, they immediately split apart and went their separate ways without another word. The younger trudged into his designated portion of their too large house while the elder strode into his.

The main house which they both called home was designed to house the normally abundant members of the clan leader's immediate family. The previous owner of the home, the former and now deceased leader of the clan, had six children, three siblings, and thirteen nieces and nephews. The house had been filled to the brim with family and the home had seen actual use. All now laid dead, besides a handful of the previous clan head's nieces, nephews, and the widows and widowers who had moved to different houses in their village. None complained as the main house served not only as the home of the clan heads but as a bitter reminder of their dead siblings, spouses, and children.

With just Madara and his brother now leading the clan, the majority of the home served little purpose besides reminding Madara of his own dead siblings and parents with its emptiness. How, if his parents and younger brothers still lived, the house could have been suitable for them.

As Madara strode down the sprawling hallways towards his bedroom, he thought of how he sometimes missed their old home, a cramp two bedroom house in the center of their village. More than anything, he knew it was a longing for a simpler time rather than a longing for the creaky, breezy home he had once shared with his brothers, his mother, and his father. For a time spent teaching his four young brothers how to wield a sword, how to swim, and even how to walk when they were babes.

He nearly allowed himself the bittersweet pleasure of envisioning the home filled with his and Sakura's children but thought better of it. To fantasize of such impossibilities would lead to nothing but heartache.

Madara finally entered his bedroom and passed into his bathing room with a heavy sigh, dispelling such thoughts immediately as he crossed the threshold. After relieving himself, he stood before the sink with the intention of brushing the nauseating taste of lingering sake out of his mouth. When he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, however, his eyes shot back to his reflection in shock.

Sweet gods, what had that woman done to his hair? He rather liked the braid, easily able to admire the skill that went into weaving it, especially considering how inebriated Sakura had been while she had braided it. More than that, he could nearly feel the sensation of her hands in his hair and against his back as she had weaved it once again, her gentle affection something that had shocked him in the pleasure it had given him.

He never would have thought he would be able to tolerate someone being behind him, the sensation always one that filled him with unease, but here Sakura had done it...

Even with how incredible the braid was, Madara couldn't bring himself to allow it to remain any longer. He found the end of the braid and hastily began to unwind it, surprised by how difficult it was to unravel. Each strand of his long hair was purposefully woven into the masterpiece he began to feel guilty for unwinding. Once he finally finished unfurling the simultaneously complex yet simple braid, he ran his fingers through his hair to return it to his normal state.

When his gaze fell upon the mirror once again, however, his jaw dropped as he took in the state of his hair. After having been tied down in the braid for the entire night, his hair clung to the shape of the braid. Instead of his hair shooting off in its normally wild state, it fell down his back in numerous curls and was exponentially... fluffier.

Deciding that there was only one way to right the unmanageable disaster that clung to his head now that the braid had been unwound, Madara quickly turned the knobs on his shower and nearly ripped off his wrinkled clothes in his haste to hop into the steaming stream.

When Madara finally emerged from his portion of the clan head household, dressed in a clean set of clothes and with water still weighing down his impossible to dry hair, and entered the study he shared with his brother, Izuna gave him a pointed look.

Madara met his stare with a look of agitation and his brother merely quirked an eyebrow in response. The elder Uchiha sat down heavily in front of the low table loaded down with scrolls, intent on sorting through as many of the mission requests as possible to distract himself from the events of the previous night and that morning.

As he picked a scroll at random and began reading through it, Izuna finally spoke. "I met with one of the messengers a short while ago. Nothing of import happened during our absence."

"Good," Madara replied with a nod without looking up from the text.

The silence dragged on and, despite the lack of conversation, Madara could feel his brother's eyes lingering on him. He ignored the sensation until he found himself reading the same sentence multiple times, distracted by Izuna's persistent gaze.

"What?" he grumbled as his eyes snapped up to meet his brother's.

"I find myself curious…" Izuna started, one eyebrow still perched high on his forehead, "Did you take a shower to wash Sakura's scent off of you?"

Madara's expressions morphed into one of confusion before he repeated, "What?"

"I couldn't help but notice that you smelled like the perfumes she uses on her robes this morning. Among other things. I'm assuming because you two slept together last night..." the younger Uchiha explained simply, eyeing him even more critically.

Shock and alarm flooded Madara at the thought of his brother having caught him and Sakura wrapped up in each others' arms. Izuna had been asleep! And they had woken up before him! When had he witnessed him holding Sakura like one would a lover?

"How did you know!? You were asleep!" Madara demanded, his eyes narrowing at his younger brother.

Izuna's eyes widened and his jaw dropped in his shock before he blurted, "You really did have sex with her?! It was just a hunch based on how you two were acting this morning but, brother, are you mad?! I know her village had this birth control but-"

"Sweet gods, quiet! We didn't have-! No!" Madara interrupted, rapidly gesturing for Izuna to lower his voice.

"But you just said-"

"I said we slept together, not that we slept together!" he hissed in a low voice.

Izuna's eyebrows came together in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing. Gods, nothing," Madara muttered in response, dragging his hand down his face as his agitation rose.

A slow grin spread across Izuna's lips as understanding dawned. "Oh? Did you two cuddle last night?"

"Shut up."

"You did! How adorable! Was this before or after she braided your hair? I'm surprised you let her sit behind you."

"Silence."

"Did you two spoon or did you fall asleep gazing into each others' eyes?"

Madara leveled his brother with the harshest glare he could manage with his face burning with embarrassment. "Do you remember that time at the river when we were eight?"

Izuna's gleeful and teasing expression immediately dropped from his face. Oh, he knew exactly what he was referring to. "I-uh… Yes?"

"If you keep talking, I swear I will do it again," he threatened venomously.

"You wouldn't!" Izuna's expression morphed from one of dismay to one of challenge, his eyes narrowing. "You couldn't!"

"Test me," Madara growled in response, staring into his brother's eyes unblinkingly to convey the severity of the threat he had given.

Izuna's challenging expression faded in the face of his brother's vehemence. He saw how very serious his threat was and soon broke eye contact. He attempted nonchalance by plucking a scroll from the table and unwinding the cord holding it shut.

With the room now silent, Madara could finally focus on these mission requests and decide who to send on each mission. Or at least he had thought. Even without his brother's lingering gaze and without his taunting, he found he could not concentrate on the words written upon the scroll in front of him.

His thoughts kept drifting away from the tedious work to the events of the night before and that morning.

Sober now, Madara began to rethink what had happened that night. His recollection was foggy at best for the majority of the night before but was incredibly crisp for some parts, namely when his sharingan had been active.

One memory was clearer to him than any other, and that was when him and Sakura had been face to face, their noses nearly brushing. He had looked so deeply into her eyes with his sharingan that he could remember every speck of color in her barely visible irises. At first he had thought her eyes were a simple sea green, but now he knew better.

Contained within her irises were all the shades of green he could imagine; hues that brought back warm memories of nature and beauty.

Shades of green that reminded him of the leaves of the oak trees that surrounded his village in the spring. Of the unending, sea-like meadows of the far west. Of the sage brush that his mother used to tend to with special care, whispering to him how the aromatic plant would grant them all long lives as if it was a great secret. Of the sour sudachi fruits his brothers and him would dare each other to eat raw in their childhood. Of the emerald geode he had once found in the center of a charred battlefield, unearthed and cracked open by an earth jutsu and a thing of beauty standing out so starkly against the backdrop of the still burning landscape.

The greens of Sakura's eyes brought with them memories of lush forests and flowering flora. She overflowed with the energy of life. She epitomized life.

What piqued Madara's attention even more than the greens of her eyes and the life they represented was her widely dilated pupils which embodied an entirely different kind of life.

Instead of flowing meadows and unending woodlands, the pitch blackness of her pupils symbolized darkened bedrooms, the darkness of the back of one's eyelids when closed in pleasure, and acts of ecstasy hidden beneath concealing layers of blankets. They expressed the life that resulted from passion.

They expressed to him that, at that moment, Sakura had felt what he had. Her pupils were to her as his unconsciously activated sharingan was to him. A tell.

Sakura had wanted him too. Gods, she would have kissed him back…

But she had been drunk, they had both been drunk. Would she have regretted it, waking up that morning knowing they had kissed? Would it have escalated further, in their drunken state? Would they have…?

Madara mentally shook himself as he began rereading the sections of the scroll his eyes had skimmed over unseeingly in his contemplation. This only worked for a few sentences before his thoughts separated from the paper before him and instead returned to that morning.

He couldn't remember a time in which he had woken up so warm and comfortable. So contented. He didn't think he'd ever admit to anyone, least of all Sakura, that he had woken up some time before she had. He had been selfish. He had allowed himself to bask in her accidental affections, in the feeling of her warm body which fit against his so flawlessly.

Madara wasn't sure when the last time he had been held was. Perhaps it was when his mother had comforted him after he had fallen from a tree as a child. He couldn't remember. But he would never forget the bliss of being held by Sakura, of holding her.

When she had finally begun to stir that morning, his arms had tightened around her to bring her back to him. To bask in her warm embrace for just a bit longer.

'Just a few more seconds,' he had thought. 'Just a few more moments of this comfort and I'll be sated for the rest of my days.'

Madara wasn't sure he even believed himself. He wasn't sure if he'd ever be satisfied with the scant few minutes he had spent holding Sakura and basking in her warmth. As he sat at that table, desperately trying to focus his thoughts on the paper before him and not on the woman who had stolen his heart, he knew that his promise had been a lie.

A/N: A sudachi is a small, green citrus fruit that is very sour. It's not meant to be eaten like a orange but is rather used as a flavoring for foods like lemons or limes. That's why Madara and his brothers dared each other to eat them as kids.