askerian | (teamwork) chapter 6, scenes 7 and 8

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(teamwork) chapter 6, scenes 7 and 8

Okay, so the first scene feels a little rough/awkward in a few spots and it bugs me; suggestions welcome. I switched bits around and i'm not sure they fit anymore, but it was that or even more blatant OOC. In the end I might have to get rid of the funny, because it STILL seems ooc to me.

Then we finally have Sakura showing some of these pregnancy hormones and maybe a bit of backbone, le gasp. mmm lil'angst. And then I drown you all in fluff BECAUSE I CAN.

The fluff is utterly disgusting in its cuteness, be warned. x_x

"If my father catches you here, he'll probably kill you dead first and interrogate your remains later, you know," Ino commented as she leaned lazily over Naruto. Naruto grinned up, tightening his hold onto her windowsill.

"Aw, come on, my intentions are honorable and all. Really."

The girl laughed, high and musical, and moved aside, letting Naruto pull the rest of his body up. Dumb anti-chakra sticking stuff on the walls, he'd fallen off once already before getting a good hold. He straddled the windowsill, looking inside Ino's bedroom curiously. It was all done in greens and golds, with some pink here and there, and just as full of pretty, breakable things as Sakura's bedroom had been the last -- and only -- time he'd visited. Naruto briefly wondered if Sakura would want to litter their place with tons of glass butterflies and other frou-frous. The thought made him grin stupidly, even with the accompanying thought of himself ruining her knickknacks and getting murdered.

There was a futon spread out beside Ino's bed, but apart from her, the room was empty.

"Where's Sakura-chan?"

"She's in the bathroom. What did you say you... two," she added; must have noticed Sasuke -- he was standing on the roof facing hers -- "were doing here?"

"Kidnapping, of course!" Naruto retorted with a sly grin. "And if I'm lucky," he added, whispering, "perhaps even some good old-fashioned molesting."

Ino burst out in giggles, and covered her mouth with a hand, the perfect well-bred lady. "Between you and me, she might need some of that. Come inside, before someone notices you."

Naruto hopped inside, just as the door opened. Naruto grinned disarmingly; whether it was Ino's dad or Sakura, looking nice and harmless would help. It was Sakura; the grin turned a bit more appreciative when he noticed that she was wearing a large t-shirt and even bigger, fuzzy sweatpants, and still toweling off her hair. So cute!

"Evening, Sakura-chan!"

She stared at him, pausing in mid-toweling. "What are you doing here?"

"They're kidnapping you," Ino informed her dutifully, staring at her nails with rapt attention. Naruto had a feeling she wanted to smirk real bad.

"... They?" Sakura repeated as she slowly lowered the towel. "What -- Naruto, it's almost ten PM--"

A little late on his cue, Sasuke appeared on the windowsill, balanced in a perfect crouch as if he'd always been there. Show-off.

"Pack your things, Sakura."

Sakura goggled at Sasuke, then at Naruto. "But -- what?"

Naruto stepped toward her and patted her shoulder consolingly. "Yeah, His Majesty has spoken."

"But I can't just--"

"Aw, come on! Where's your sense of adventure?"

"In bed, and I was hoping to join it soon," she replied acerbically.

"Wah! Sakura-chan has been cheating on us with an anthropomorphic personification of a concept!"

The all stared at him, as if he'd sprouted horns and wings. He grinned his best shit-eating grin right back.

"... You were actually listening to that nonsense on the radio?" Sasuke finally asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

"It sounded pretty neat," Naruto replied truthfully, and gave him the most innocent look he could manage.

"And how the hell did you remember it? I bet I can't even pronounce it," Ino retorted, disgusted.

"Um. I practiced."

Sakura started laughing along with Ino, and even Sasuke snorted, turning away to hide his amusement. Or maybe it was contempt, but Naruto wanted to be optimistic, and besides Sasuke tended to mix the two liberally, anyway.

"Dork," Sakura uttered, shaking her head sadly even as she smiled at him.

"Hey!" Naruto protested, for the principle.

"Pack up your stuff, Sakura," Sasuke said again. Naruto couldn't help but notice that with her, the bastard could actually sound like he was making a suggestion and not giving orders.

"Everything?"

Seeing Sakura-chan's desolate look, she was probably thinking they were this close to running away from Konoha again. "Ah, at least enough for tonight and tomorrow. You can come back for the rest later!"

"Alright," she finally capitulated, and, crouching, a knee on her futon, started adding stuff to a little backpack. "I don't want to leave without saying goodbye to Ino's parents."

"And to me?" Ino asked tartly, and frowned imperiously at the two boys before Sakura could answer. "Where are you taking her anyway? If it isn't a secret."

"Oh, it's not really a secret," Naruto started.

"Sakura can tell you tomorrow," Sasuke cut him.

Naruto blinked at Sasuke. What the heck; why not now? It wasn't like Ino was going to follow them and spy on them, or babble to her parents and send ANBU after them. He was so damn paranoid.

"... Sasuke-kun?" Sakura looked up at the window.

Sasuke jumped off the windowsill, padded to her silently, not even glancing at Naruto as he brushed past him. Leaning over her, he rested a pale hand on Sakura's hand, the one that was holding up her backpack.

"Do you trust me?" Sasuke asked softly.

Naruto wondered why he was saying that now; it was evident that Sakura was going to trust them until they were safe and could explain, there was no need to ask again.

Sakura was sitting on the edge of the futon, neck arched to gaze up at Sasuke with a look of sudden understanding in her slightly-too-wide eyes. "That -- now?"

Sasuke nodded, straightened up, abandoning her hand as if he'd never been touching her of his own will at all. Naruto shuddered, blinking. That -- for a moment, he'd almost felt like he was part of their silent communication. But he hadn't been; and he hadn't been the one Sakura's whole body had been angled toward, in unconscious adoration.

Bah! The bastard hadn't gotten a date with her either. It probably hadn't even occurred to him at all.

Sakura was putting on her sandals quickly, a lot more businesslike now. "I'll see you later, Ino-pig," she assured as she jumped on her feet. "Come on, let's go now."

Then she was hurrying Sasuke to the window and tugging Naruto along by the sleeve.

Naruto was about to jump out after them when Ino's hand caught his other sleeve.

"Naruto?" The blonde girl looked worried. "You're not going to do anything stupid, are you? Sasuke and you really are more trouble than you're worth sometimes."

"Nah, relax; the only stupid thing that might happen is these two talking and talking until dawn, and I really want to get some molestation in." With that, he jumped onto the next roof, waving back at Ino, and worked on catching up on his teammates.

+

Naruto wasn't sure why Sakura was making that wary, pouty face; they'd scrubbed the house clean, in the little time they had before picking her up.

Okay, they'd cleaned up the living room.

Well, the floor and the coffee table weren't too dirty, at any rate. The couch had stunk of mildew and its cushions had been full of mice nests, so they'd pulled it out in the backyard and left it there. Some of the smell lingered.

Still! It wouldn't be any less comfortable than camping out, and at least they wouldn't get rained on.

They'd even placed buckets under the leaks in the ceiling.

"Um... Any reason why we're... Here?"

"It has a dojo and no neighbors," Sasuke replied without turning around. He was kneeling by the coffee table, emptying the bag of scrolls and notes. "And the roof is still mostly sound, which isn't the case of many other houses around here," he added with a touch of sarcasm.

Naruto had a feeling Sakura had been asking what the hell they were doing in the Uchiha district in the first place, even if this house stood almost on the other end of the district from where Sasuke's home had been. He also had a feeling that Sasuke had been fully aware of the nuance. Bah.

"He says we need space to do our thing," Naruto informed Sakura helpfully. "And besides this house could be pretty neat; it just needs a little work."

Sakura gave the moldy walls and the swelled-shut wooden blinds a doubtful look.

"No, seriously, it's got two bathrooms and an attic. And tons of space! We could live here -- or try to," he amended as he caught her expression, "at least until we either fix it or find something better. There would be nothing to pay, and ... We'd have more than enough space to be together," he added, his voice softening unintentionally, and tried not to look too pleading.

Mollified, she pulled her sleeping bag out of her pack. Naruto's and Sasuke's were folded in two by the coffee table, as seats; she dropped hers facing Sasuke's spot and then sat on it gingerly, watching Sasuke and his notes with trepidation.

"So, what is this grand scheme about?"

Sasuke pushed one of the sheets of paper at her. She picked it up as if it was about to blow up. Morbidly curious, Naruto crept closer, taking place on his own sleeping bag at one end of the room.

"I haven't finished the research," Sasuke said quietly as she read.

She blinked, slowly, and looked up at Sasuke as if she had never seen him in her life and wasn't especially thrilled to see him now. "... You want to inject my potentially half-demon child with demon chakra. Excuse me, but are you fucking crazy?"

Naruto winced at her disbelieving tone. "Well, it was my idea -- and no, not into the kid, but into you."

"We need to get it from someone who wouldn't be bothered by the constant drain." Sasuke looked just as stubbornly expressionless; Naruto didn't like it.

"Oh, then I guess it makes it okay."

Naruto winced; Sasuke's eyelid twitched.

"I mean, after all, the Kyuubi will just possess me and not the child! It isn't like everyone wasn't already worried that the child might be possessed when there was no physical link--"

"And Jiraiya told us that Kyuubi was bound to me now and forever and that he'd die with me!" Naruto cut her off, slamming his palm against the table. Sakura and Sasuke stared at him; he glared back at Sakura, refusing to look down. "Please, we've tried to find ways around everything we could think of. It looks doable. Won't you at least look, too? If you find a problem that Sasuke missed, well, then, we'll drop it. But -- come on." He reached out hesitantly, touched her hair; expecting her to bolt any second now. "...Please."

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. "Well, I guessed right at least. The Council and Hokage-sama will tear us apart."

"Not if it works. It isn't like we're trying to break his seal."

"... But what if we damage it? What if we damage Naruto's seal and his -- host starts taking control of him?" She paused, suddenly -- stared at Naruto. "Naruto... How did you get that idea?"

Naruto shrugged. "I just thought that I had so much chakra and you had so little, and there are so many jutsus that drain people's chakra."

"Are you sure," she said softly, "are you absolutely sure that it wasn't Kyuubi's idea?"

Naruto stared at her for a few seconds, and then he grinned insouciantly. "Yep." Reasonably so. He ignored a dark chuckle as the demon fox caught the gist of the conversation. "But he agrees."

"He agrees -- Naruto! What's to say we're not playing right into his hands! How can you even trust him--"

"I don't. But I can tell when he lies, and he can't leave me. Even if my seal was unraveled now, he'd lose huge chunks of himself and he'd probably die. Sakura-chan... I won't tell you he cares, 'cause he really doesn't, but he doesn't really want the kid to die."

Sakura looked down at the scrolls, uneasy. "...In the stories I read, kitsune could possess people."

Sasuke crossed his arms, giving an annoyed sniff. "And that's why we're going to make damn sure that all you get is chakra, and nothing else." He pushed the scrolls at her again; cautiously, as if it might bite, she picked up the first one and reluctantly started reading.

"...A permanent drain?" Sakura frowned, visibly uneasy with the idea. "I'm not sure I like the idea."

"It's semi-permanent; from my calculations, it will last a year or two before all that chakra erodes it. You're free to counter-check."

"I will." Still frowning, she kept reading. Naruto started tapping his fingers on the table in a complicated little rhythm; Sasuke glared him into transferring the tapping to his thigh. Sakura didn't seem to notice.

"Why didn't you explore the possibility of regularly draining Naruto for chakra? There are short-action ninjutsus for that; Kakashi-sensei probably knows a ton, there has to be one that wouldn't hurt Naruto. You went directly with opening a long-lasting conduit between Naruto and I..."

Sasuke lifted his hand, and started counting on his fingers. "First, they would only tap his surface chakra, which would exhaust him as he tries to drag up more from the Kyuubi to replace the loss; which also means regularly opening himself up to the Kyuubi. Second, none of us has a bloodline or a specialty that would make such a drain doable without more than simple hand seals. We would either have to draw a circle with all the right patterns over and over again, with all the problems of necessary space and possibility for error that ensue. Or we would have to stop whatever we were doing and come back to the main circle every few days. There would be a possibility of other people trying to tap into it and steal Naruto's chakra."

"Also, there would be more occasions for people to start getting all hissy and telling us to stop," Naruto added with a nonchalant shrug. "Or thinking that we're preparing a coup or something."

Sakura scowled. "As if they won't, when they realize that I have a direct pipeline into the hugest source of raw chakra our country has ever known."

"Well, yeah, but they won't be able to break it so easily, and we can convince them that it was for your health and nothing else."

She shook her head. "They'll just separate us. Without a grounded seal, it's harder to keep a connection between two people. There's a reason Tsunade-sama said she'd have to keep me in bed if they tried that with me; if I leave the circle, it weakens the link! It isn't possible to link two people directly without forcing them to regularly be in contact... No, a seal applied directly on someone wouldn't keep up a regular channel. It would weaken with distance," she repeated, stubborn.

"The Heaven seal didn't," Sasuke replied quietly.

Naruto tensed; Sakura flinched. Sasuke's hands were ostensibly resting on the table, as if he wanted to prove that he didn't feel the urge to touch his neck.

"That's different," Sakura eventually replied. She wasn't looking at Sasuke, and she sounded a little choked up. "The Heaven seal would have been dormant unless you decided to use it, wasn't it? Whereas this one..."

"This one won't let your reserves get so low that you can't sustain the child. But the rest should be up to you. And of course, if you take more than you can handle, you'll die."

"But it will never be entirely closed."

Sasuke shrugged, and gave her a long unimpressed look. "It's a matter of strength of will."

Sakura's back stiffened, and she gave Sasuke a furious glare. Naruto had a feeling that the bastard was about to end up in the doghouse. "Is there something you want to say, Sasuke-kun?"

Sasuke shrugged and leaned back. "I just said it. It's a matter of strength of will. And you shouldn't need inhuman amounts of it. If you want to refuse anyway, alright, it's your choice. We'll just wait for you to find another way."

Sakura's fists slammed on the coffee table and she rose on her knees; Naruto started reaching up to hold her back, but she stopped herself, stiff and radiating barely contained rage.

"You -- son of a bitch. Do you think I haven't tried? Do you think it isn't all I think about, in between training and missions and more training? I can't even think properly, I'm exhausted all the time and -- you're blackmailing me with -- with -- you son of a bitch!"

Naruto winced, and crawled over to her side of the table. He didn't remember ever seeing her get this angry with Sasuke -- he didn't remember her getting quite this angry at him, for that matter. "Sakura-chan, he didn't mean --"

"I think that's exactly what he meant!" She speared Sasuke with another glare. "That if I can't do any better, I should shut up -- it's my body, I'll be the one at risk! I'm not at risk enough already?.!"

Naruto flinched; he gave Sasuke a nervous look, but Sasuke seemed to be carved into a block of marble.

"I'm sick and tired of this situation! I'm sick and tired of having my whole career messed with, and my life put at risk -- and then you two go around and just pull a solution out of your asses and pretend it's just perfect like the risks don't matter -- you're not the ones who'll risk going crazy or dying -- and I'm sick and tired of not even being able to save my own damn self!"

The echo of her final shriek died, swallowed by the old walls. Naruto couldn't think of a single thing to say to fill the silence.

"You -- you just ride into town like heroes and fix everything without asking, and it's all so perfect that we're not allowed to criticize anything, and that gets on my nerves, alright? It really gets on my nerves."

Naruto opened his mouth, but he didn't know what he wanted to say, so he closed it again. Sakura was turned away from both of them, her shoulders tense, her knuckles white. He wanted to fix it, but she didn't want him to, even if he had known how.

"I apologize."

Sasuke's voice was quiet, measured. He was scowling; probably didn't like having to say it. He didn't have much practice, to be frank. Naruto looked back at Sakura; she was still turned away, but there was a curious stillness to her posture that made him hold his breath.

"... Yes, well." She got up, rather stiffly. "I'm going to check out the house. If we're going to live here--" She snapped her jaws closed, walked out without looking at either of them. Naruto slowly sat back down on his sleeping bag, giving Sasuke an alarmed look. Sasuke didn't look back; both elbows on the table, hands in front of his mouth again, he was staring at the scrolls.

"...Sasuke?"

"I'm going to make tea."

And then Naruto was alone in the living room and wondering how it could have gone so wrong so fast.

Sakura had said she was thinking of living there, right? With them? And she hadn't left. She was just cooling down. And Sasuke -- well.

Well, fuck. He slumped back on his sleeping bag, sprawled, and stared at the ceiling. The proper christening of the house was going to be harder than expected.

Sasuke drifted back ten minutes later, with a kettle and mugs; Naruto lifted his head from the floor and watched him set them on the table in silence, and let his head fall again when Sasuke sat and started sipping quietly. Sakura was away for a half-hour at least; they could hear a few thumps and scrapes as she, presumably, moved furniture around and forced open a few windows upstairs. Naruto closed his eyes and listened, trying to guess what every sound meant; some were pretty indefinable. Eventually, the noises died down; and a few minutes after a large appliance had crashed into the couch, out in the garden, she was walking down the stairs and back to the living room.

"There's so much dust upstairs. The windows better be open when we clean it off or we're going to suffocate."

Naruto grinned and sprang into a sitting position. "Yeah, you should have seen what the living room looked like. It was like walking in snow!"

"Gray snow. Ew."

Sakura sneaked a glance at Sasuke. He wasn't looking at her; he was pouring another mug of tea. Still silent, he picked it up and placed it in front of her, and then he looked up. They stared at each other for a while; finally, Sakura closed her eyes and her strained expression softened.

"...How do you plan on filtering out the Kyuubi's influence?"

Sasuke opened another scroll, showing her diagrams that looked like snowflakes and lines and lines of calculations.

"Mmh. What's that x variable?"

"Demonic chakra doesn't react entirely like human chakra. There's always a variable. I don't think it can be erased."

"It's not a perfect solution, Sakura-chan," Naruto intervened. "There's always going to be a risk where the furball is concerned. He could be lying to me, his chakra could be impossible to use for anyone who wasn't born with it -- perhaps we can't convert it and it will burn you like it burned Sasuke. Perhaps it will affect the kid and then we'll end up with a kitsune child." He looked up at her, the poor little smile he had been holding on dissipating. "Perhaps you'll die. And we can't tell you to risk it instead of keeping on trusting in the old hag. Maybe she'll find something -- or your body will adapt or the drain will slow down and then our idea will be useless. I don't have a clue."

Sakura stared down into her cup, and then delicately lifted it to take a sip, a distant look in her eyes. "So in the end, it's all left to chance."

"But there are still probabilities," Sasuke countered. "And if we work on this idea, get rid of as many variables as possible, perhaps we can reduce the probabilities to a more acceptable level."

Sakura didn't move for a long moment, staring down into her cup; and then she nodded. "Alright. Alright, I'll work on it. It still isn't a yes!" she warned them sternly. Naruto just beamed back. If she ended up saying no, it would be because there was a problem that just couldn't be worked out. But at least they were doing something.

Well. Sasuke and Sakura were doing something.

At first Naruto contributed a few words here and there, but eventually they drifted into arcane calculations and secondary and tertiary meanings of the twelve hand seals and elemental resonance and whatnot, and he was reduced to crossing his arms on the table and letting their voices wash over him, since he didn't have a clue what they were on about.

He didn't even realize he had dozed off; he just noticed when he woke up, slumped uncomfortably against the table, and found them still debating quietly at the light of an old oil lamp. Sakura had a scroll of her own to write her notations, and it was already halfway full. Naruto didn't have a great sense of time, but it must have been after two AM at the very least.

"That's not possible -- oh, damn it, I lost the thread again. How far did you get?"

"... I got a different result again." Sasuke glared at his paper and pencil, as if they had betrayed him. Sakura gave a tired giggle.

Naruto sat up, stretched his arms over his head, then reached out quickly and stole both scrolls. "Time's up! You're going to bed now."

"Naruto! I was just -- you can't do that, I was writing!"

"No, you weren't, you were crossing out stuff. Just let it rest and try again tomorrow, you -- whoops! Missed," he exclaimed as he dodged Sasuke's sudden lunge.

"Naruto..." Sasuke growled.

Naruto hid the scrolls behind his back. "Nope. Iruka-sensei and Kakashi-sensei both say that when people are tired, they make stupid mistakes. You two are making stupid mistakes, and we've got to be up at seven AM on top of that. Kakashi's going to destroy you two if you come and train without having slept."

Sasuke and Sakura exchanged annoyed looks, but eventually, they capitulated.

"Fine, fine. Give me back my scroll, I want to note down a few ideas," Sakura asked. Naruto gave her a suspicious look. "Just a few tracks to explore later!"

Sasuke snatched the scrolls from Naruto's hand. "And in the meantime, you can make the bed."

Snorting, Naruto went to get the blankets they'd brought back from the apartment and unfolded them in a dry corner, piling them up to cushion the floor a little. At least it was wood, not stone; they wouldn't get cold.

... It was too bad that the sleeping bags were way too narrow for two people, much less three.

But if he unzipped them all the way... Grinning, he spread his own over the blankets to make it less scratchy.

"What are you doing?"

"Making the bed," he replied, sticking out his tongue. "And gimme your sleeping bags; I'll zip them together to make a big blanket."

Sasuke was giving the blankets an unconvinced look. "The one who's going to be in the middle better not need to get up too fast during the night," he groused; by which he meant he wanted one of the sides for easy escape.

Naruto looked at Sakura. "You wanna be in the middle?"

"Um."

Okay, what had he said that would make her blush.

"Sakura-chan? I figured..."

She rolled her scrolls and aligned them in a corner of the coffee table. "Um, I'd love to, but... Sometimes I do need to get up fast in the morning, and well, I don't want to pull out the blanket with me."

Sasuke frowned. "You still get morning sickness?"

"...Yes, that too."

"Aha! Need to pee?" Naruto dodged a flying pen and snickered at her. "Okay, okay -- oh hey, that means I get to be in the middle? Awesome!"

Sasuke gave him a long, suspicious look. But he must have been tired, because he didn't say anything. Naruto was still a little groggy from waking up from his too-short nap himself, to be frank.

Not enough to keep the glee down. He went to put the pen back on the table, then dug through his pack to find his pajamas. The nightcap had suffered an irreparable tear during a joint mission with Kiba, that rat bastard. ...and if he slept between the two of them, he would probably be warm enough to forego the top. Hohoho.

He couldn't help but laugh as Sakura eep-ed and retreated to the corridor when he started to strip, though. "Aw, come on, you've seen me naked before."

"Oh, shut up!"

Still chuckling, Naruto got into his pajama pants. By the table, Sasuke was pulling off his collared shirt and shorts; he folded them before looking in his pack. So anal-retentive. Naruto was kind of disappointed when the boxers stayed on, and a tank top made its appearance. Well, at least it showed some shoulders.

"Do you own even one top that isn't blue?" he nagged, chuckling a little.

"Do you own anything that isn't orange, or black?"

"Lemme think... I've got green briefs... Oh, Sakura-chan, you can come back." He turned to look toward the corridor -- and found her standing there, blushing just a little. "Sakura-chan! Don't tell me you were peeping!"

"I wasn't!"

"You're blushing!"

"I wasn't peeping," she repeated as she stomped in the living room. "It's just kind of ... hitting me. You know... Going to bed, with... um."

Sasuke sat down on the outer side of the bed, put down the oil lamp on the floor in arm's reach, and looked up at her. He didn't say anything; he just waited. She looked back, standing there in the middle of the room. Naruto gave her his hand, which she took without looking at him, and led her to their corner.

They sat in a circle, giving each other little looks.

"It's... Kind of weird, isn't it."

"But not a bad weird, right?"

"No, no. Just a -- a 'I've known them forever and now we're sharing a bed' weird. And I know we've done that before, but this time it's different. It's -- it's deliberate. Do you understand?"

Naruto scratched his head. He thought so; but he also thought that she was thinking too much, once again.

"We'll get used to it, I guess," Sasuke commented prosaically, and lifted the improvised blanket.

Naruto grinned. Yeah, they would.

There was some awkwardness as they took place; his ankle bumped into Sasuke's, Sakura kept shifting at his side, and the blanket was just large enough. Not that he cared; he was in the middle. But the discreet tug of war over him was distracting. He looked at Sasuke -- who was turning his back on them, of course -- and then at Sakura. She gave him a guilty look.

"Uncomfortable?"

"...No pillow."

Naruto offered his arm; and was surprised when she took it, curling up against his side shyly, her head on his shoulder. He hugged her tight, nuzzling her hair.

"...'night Sakura-chan."

"Goodnight, Naruto," she whispered back. "Goodnight, Sasuke-kun."

"Yeah, 'night, bastard."

Sasuke doused the light and lay back down, his back still on them. "Goodnight. Now sleep."

Naruto snorted quietly, and ran his fingers up his spine. Sasuke jerked briefly and kicked back at Naruto's leg. "Don't even start."

"Aw, come on, I'd sleep better after a quickie."

Sakura gasped on a shocked giggle. "Naruto!"

"If it's too late to stay up, doesn't it follow that it's too late for sex?" Sasuke grumbled tiredly.

"Yes, you were the one who nagged us into getting some sleep," Sakura added as she poked Naruto in the side.

"No spontaneity," Naruto whined. "I'm gonna die of blue balls one of these days, mark my words. And then you'll cry and say 'oh, if we had known, we would have given him a handjob or two,' but it will be TOO LATE."

Sakura's hand slid over his stomach, soft, light, and he gasped.

Then she pinched him.

"Ow!"

"Sleep. Pervert."

He would have protested, but then she kissed his jaw, so he shut up.

"Goodnight."

"G'night."

"We aren't going to start again, are we? Just sleep already."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Fuck you."

Sakura chuckled softly. "Love you too."

"... Yeah," Naruto replied softly.

Sasuke didn't say anything, which they took as assent.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Awww...so awkwardly sweet. ^^

thanks^^

EEEE!! ♥ ♥ ♥

oh, if we had known, we would have given him a handjob or two
XDDDD I love Naruto's reasoning!

I think the plan's rather good myself. :)

Naruto's reasoning is indeed very love-worthy. Also handjob-worthy, but we've seen how well that works. SAD. u.u

...Well, I didn't expect Sakura to react like *that*. *snorts* I should have, though. Can't exactly blame her. I know *I'd* be pissed about having the fact that she can't think of a way to save her own life rubbed in her face. *wince* But the fluff made up for the painful parts. ^^

Hormones. u.u They'd been building up, after all.

♥ the fluff ate my souuuul.

"In which Sakura has Sasuke whipped." *smirk of approval* It's great to see her lash out effectively, particularly after That Scene in Chapter 5. And Naruto trying so hard. And Sasuke - *shakes head*.

Two little remarks: "Excuse me, but are you fucking crazy?"
Naruto winced at her flat, disbelieving tone. looks a little odd, what with the contrast between the "fucking crazy" and the flat tone.

"I'm not at risk enough already?.!"
The dot?

I have so much love for your Ino. The silence following Naruto's scary, scary declaration is hilarious.

Speaking of hilarious, I had unvolontary flahbacks to Aladdin when Sasuke asked Sakura if she trusted him.

Random highlights: SAKURA. Well, I thought it was worth repeating. Sasuke getting Protective and Concerned (Sasuke frowned. "You still get morning sickness?"). Naruto neatly breaking when he feels like he doesn't belong/ is so freakin' happy to be in the middle. And bothering them until the two stop working.

Dammit Naruto, do something. Don't let them angst like that, or you're never going to have sex again. Hell, don't let Sasuke go all take-charge-ask-no-question-follow-me-bitch, cause we've all just seen how well it goes.

hohohoho. So glad you approve. >D

yah, the flat tone thing was because there had bee two replies from her and i had to move around stuff, and you're right, it doesn't work anymore. ~__~

As for the dot, it's because FFnet regularly strips the ? out of any ?! group. So my shout-questions turn into exclamations and AURGH I DIDNT WRITE THAT STOP KILLING MY FICS YOU ASSHOLES. But I only do the dot thing when I remember. XDD;;;

It's been ages since I saw Aladdin, so... if you say so? XD

Thank you for the comment *^____^* i'm glad you like it. ♥

So much for the proper christening of the house. XD

Alas! ;_;

... later rly. u.u damn it, you three, you're supposed to be horny teenagers, act more like it!

♥! So much love for this series, and I'm always glad to see more of it. XD All looks good to me, and I don't see any OOCness. Also, yay for Sakura backbone. And more yay for the utter cuteness at the end.

One thing:

>>Naruto blinked at Sasuke. What the heck; why not now? It wasn't like Ino was going to follow them and spy on them, or babble to her parents and send ANBU after them. He was so damn paranoid.

"... Sasuke-kun?" Sakura looked up at the window from her

I think something got cut off there. Figured I'd point that out in case you didn't catch it. :)

mwee~~

and oops. XD thanks, i'mma gonna fix it.

eee! That was so great! i love them snuggling in together for the night. And Naruto splitting hairs with them--the whole 'you're not writing you're crossing stuff out' thing.

I love this fic so much, I really do.

Ahhh Sasuke-ese. "Fuck you."

Sakura chuckled softly. "Love you too."

#^___^# thank you! ♥

First I find out you wrote the Saki-chan stories, now I find out you wrote Teamwork too. Ahh! I read the first couple chapters a few months ago and loved it ... I skipped the chapters since then and read this, and I still love it. Unbelieveable. You're a great writer. And Sasuke needs to get yelled at more often. By Sakura. Preferably backed up with a whip.

Ahaha. XD;;;; So then why did you friend me at first? (not sarcasm, genuinely curious :p)

Oh, whips. *_* Sakura so is going to end up a dominatrix. u.u

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