I blame DeGlace and her crackful amazingness for the fluffy deluge below.

Hooked

FRESH:

Sakura took a deep, cleansing breath before stepping into the bar. She would make a good first impression.

HULK:

When Kisame, her new employer, shook her hand she was surprised to find it gentle. Almost too gentle. She remembered thinking that he must be used to breaking people.

ACID:

She cut herself while slicing a lemon. He threatened to lick it if she didn't put on a band-aid.

SLUG:

"You have a shotgun."

"Put it back under the counter after you use it."

GOLD:

A rowdy customer accidental upended an entire bottle of edible glitter on Kisame while he was mixing their drink. She teased him about fairy dust for the next month.

TWO-TIMER:

"You have another job?"

"Um. Yeah. It's that coffee shop down the road."

"Quit."

"What?"

BREAKABLE:

He wasn't too pleased when she dropped the new shipment of margarita glasses, but when he helped her step over the mess he realized she might be as fragile as the glass was.

FLICKER:

Sometimes, she swore she caught him staring.

ECHO:

The dreams weren't nearly as good as the real thing, he realized, watching her pull up her hair.

SHADOW:

He was willing to share his past, but she was unusually reticent about hers. "I'm not really proud of it."

"Nothing new there," he grunted, sliding an end-of-shift shot her way. "Let's play twenty questions."

SLUG II:

"But it's cute!"

"Keep that thing away from me. In fact, get it out of my bar or I'm firing you."

IVY:

She didn't really notice until it was too late.

TONGUE:

When Hidan wouldn't stop wagging his tongue at her she threatened to nail it to the bar counter with the tacky mini dagger he wore around his neck. Kisame thought it was all very funny until Hidan said he could find a better use for it.

BADLANDS:

He made sure, always, that he walked her across the dark parking lot to her dumpy little truck before making his way home.

ELEMENT:

He wouldn't have pegged her as someone with lots of agility, but watching her fling around four bottles of alcohol, her eyes laughing, he had to rethink his assessment. She was in her element.

BET:

He plucked her tips from her hand, counting a couple dozen bills before handing her a significantly depleted stack.

"You really shouldn't bet against me, shrimp."

"You fucking shark."

BRICK:

He felt kind of useless after watching her plow her fist into a handsy customer's stomach. Not easy to be a hero if the damsel could save herself.

Still, he stuck close to her after that.

TREASURE:

Kisame didn't like the look of him the second he walked in. Red hair, dark clothes, darker expression. He strode up to the bar like he owned the damn place, the punk. "I'm here for Sakura. Pink hair, flat chest. Tell her Sasori's looking for her."

"She isn't here."

(She was in the back, washing dishes, but Kisame didn't think he needed to know that.)

Sasori frowned. "When does she work next?"

"I'm not at liberty to give out employee information."

Sasori frowned harder, then scribbled out his number on the back of a blank check. "Give her this next time you see her. Tell her to call me."

"Sure."

(Kisame never did.)

SLATE:

She liked looking at his tattoos. They weren't complicated, but they were expansive, spanning across his back, shoulders, arms and neck in thick, tribal lines of slate blue. When he moved, they'd distort, and watching them shift and morph was oddly entrancing.

ELASTIC:

Her honesty, he found, watching her politely slide her hand away from an interested regular, was pretty elastic. "I'm sorry. I have a boyfriend."

Not that he really minded.

BACHELOR:

"You're single?"

"Don't sound so shocked, shrimp. It's gonna hurt my feelings."

And for reasons she didn't want to look too closely at, she was very, very pleased.

BUMPER:

When she got rear-ended she had to put her car in the shop. It was Kisame who offered to give her rides to and from work, and if at the end of the day she invited him in because it was raining and it was cold and he only had that jacket to protect him because he rode a motorcycle and it really wasn't all those reasons that made her want him to come inside….Well.

It really was her business, wasn't it?

ABSTINENCE:

"You know," said Ino, swiping some whip cream off her dessert and popping it into her mouth. "One of you two are going to snap one day; the tension can't last forever."

CHANT:

Comfort was never his forte, but when her grandpa died and she came to him, his arms were all the words she needed.

TEST:

Small she may be but Sakura didn't get her strength from some fifth dimension she pulled out of thin air. Therefore, she was used to men thinking she weighed considerably less than she really did, and on the odd occasion where they thought to pick her up (Kiba had confessed that she just looked like she was fun to pick up) she was used to the surprised 'oomph!' or grunt that came after, quickly followed by some awkward scrambling to put her back on her feet before they dropped her.

So when Kisame got a little tipsy one day and decided he was going to sweep her up like high tide, she was duly surprised that her weight meant literally nothing to him and ended up giggling like a fool as he spun her in circles.

CATWALK:

"Oh my god," she whispered, then promptly hid a squeal as Ino dragged her behind an elaborate flower arrangement. "Sakura if you do not make any progress with that man in the next week I will never forgive you."

Sakura nodded her head, thinking that they should attend weddings more often. Kisame looked very good in a tux.

FUTURE:

She watched him count the change, crunch the numbers, comfort the drunks, and control the chaos. Nothing ever really seemed to faze him. "You know," she said to him one day after mopping the floor. "If you ever had kids, you'd make a kick-ass dad."

LEASH:

He didn't have one.

NICKNAMES:

"Micro."

"Macro."

CHASER:

When she jerked he didn't let her get away, threading his hands in her soft, thick hair, feeling the warmth of her head as he tasted the daquiri she just drank, liquid courage burning away in his gut. He'd been patient up till this point, she could stand to let him have his fill.

It was when she wrapped her legs around his waist, letting him hoist her up to the counter, that he realized he was dizzy from more than just the alcohol.

FALLING:

For her, it was like falling into a well—there was no easy way out.

For him, it was like tumbling down a hill—it had started out slow.

It was out of their hands now.

CREDIT:

Itachi claims it was his doing that got them together. After all, if he hadn't gotten so very sick and needed that two month vacation to his family's mountain villa for fresh air, and if he hadn't called in the only reliable bartender he knew to fill his spot while he was gone, the two would have never met.

Ino loudly protested this when he mentioned it in his best man speech. She was the one who let slip Sakura was single. Without that nugget of knowledge Kisame would have never made a move.

EASY:

He was intuitive and cynical, she was impulsive and stubborn.

But they both cared, and that's all they needed.

(Besides the three seminars on developing good communication, of course. No one ever said love was a fairytale.)

PULSE:

When she took off to visit friends in America, he had trouble sleeping right. Koala that she was, he'd gotten used to feeling a pulse beat against his ribcage, gotten used to her breath fanning out against his collarbone. It was weird, having her gone.

MEDUSA:

It sounded cheesy, but there were times when she'd look at him at it…it just stopped his whole world.

BLOOM:

"Hmm? You don't like your namesake?" He eyed her hair. She frowned. "I've never liked what it represented."

"What? Fragile?"

"No," she tied off the garbage strings and made her way to the back door. "Fleeting."

He'd never admit it to anyone but after that he was half-afraid she'd disappear and never come back.

EXORCISM:

"Kill it! Kill it! Ohmygod kill it now! AIEE! KISAME IT FLIES!"

SWITCH:

One time, the lights went out in the bar and he'd had one hell of time pretending to fumble so he could keep touching her.

The best part was that he didn't think he was the only one.

JUMP:

Kisame's bar/pub, Castaway, was equipped with elevated bars so as to deter people from reaching over and fishing for a free beer. She hated that she had to jump a little to get into it, but Kisame thought it was adorable.

SOFT:

She couldn't stop the stupid grin when she saw him handle a kitten. It was just—so—cute!

DATE:

Date day (or night) was usually spent at a pool or a beach. They both liked swimming, and they had a strange catch and release game that they played with each other. Kisame always said he won since he caught her, but she let him. It wasn't fun otherwise.

MAN:

Okay, so maybe she didn't need to have bottled alcohol all the time, and maybe she didn't need Kisame to pop the caps or the twist-offs when she did, but…there was something about handing him the drink, watching him wrap his fingers around the cap or lining it up with a table, and knowing that he was doing it for her, that made her chest flutter.

FOCUS:

"Sorry," she said in a tone that wasn't sorry in the least, molding her body to his side. "He's taken."

BLOW:

"Fuck!"

He slammed his hands down on either side of the empty cash box, broken glass around his feet, several bottles missing.

Sakura watched his head bow and tiptoed across the floor of shards to slide between him and what should be in front him. She framed his face, kissed his brow, his lips, and whispered, "You've always been bigger than the little people."

THRILL:

He was always such a dominant partner. It was quite the sensation to bring him to his knees with a smile.

SHOWSTOPPERS:

His bar was theirs now. She took care of the finances (mathlete mode, he called it) and he kept the place filled with an audience. They did flair bartending together, since she had graduated.

HOLIDAY:

"Okay, okay…shark-boy and lava-girl. Yeah? Really? YES!"

PRIMITIVE:

Being so much taller than her, it was easy for Kisame to zero in on all the men looking at his girlfriend like a strange human radio tower that constantly received signals of salacious intent, and when that happened he happily placed one massive hand on the small of her back and guided her closer to him. The men always looked away.

"Kisame? What's with the smile?"

MEDIC:

"Do not move. I mean it."

IT:

They didn't have to say it to know it.