It's been awhile.

Rated M. Secondary warning: you may want some wine with this cheese.

J – Joy

"Forehead!" Ino shouted as she ran out of the tree line and onto the flat plain of the training grounds to crash Team Kakashi's morning sparring session.

Sakura jumped away from where she was locked in a short-sword fight with Sai. She swiped her wrist across her forehead to wipe away the sweat that had gathered at her brow and to subconsciously wipe away the sting of her old nickname.

"Yeah, Pig?" she asked, as she tried to calm her breathing, and made her way towards her blond friend.

"Great news," Ino shouted back with her excitement reflected her huge grin and flushed cheeks.

"Oh?" Sakura replied flatly, not sure whether the news was worth having her morning exercise interrupted. A few more minutes and she was certain that she would have been able to wear down Sai enough to finally force him to admit defeat. Or at least, she thought she could.

"I'm pregnant!" Ino replied, jolting Sakura from her dreams of victory.

Sakura's jaw dropped open and her eyes bugged out in surprise. It took a moment for the fact that her best friend was expecting to sink in, but when it did she couldn't help but smile and get a little teary. In fact, she was so moved she forced her normally fastidious friend into a sweaty hug. And Ino couldn't help but surprise Sakura again when she returned the hug before pulling away.

"That's amazing, Ino. I had no idea you and Choji were even trying to get pregnant. You only got engaged last month, right? Is that why?"

"Nope, total accident," she said, the smile belying her pleased opinion on the matter.

"Oh," Sakura said a bit skeptically, before asking the niggling question in the back of her mind, "But aren't contraceptive injections mandatory for all kunoichi not registered for family planning?"

"Yup. Looks like I got some of the dud batch."

"Dud batch?" Sakura felt her knees grow weak. "What do you mean by 'dud batch'?"

"Hokage-sama messed up when she was making the contraceptive injections last month. In fact, Shizune found out she was pregnant just yesterday. Which means we may have gotten lucky, and it was only the female medics that got some of the bum supply. We can't lose all of our kunoichi to maternity leave, right?"

"Oh god," Sakura said, her knees finally failing her. When her ass hit the ground, her teammates finally took the initiative to approach the two usually volatile women that when combined often became explosive.

"Oi, Sakura-chan, you okay?" Naruto shouted, reaching out to touch her shoulders.

Her head turned slowly and in a blank face she muttered, "Dud batch. Maternity leave. I am going to kill her."

"Huh?" Naruto asked, as Sakura's words made no sense to him.

"I have to go," she replied. She shook Naruto's grip off, stood up a bit shakily, and walked into the forest on jellied legs. "Congratulations, Ino," she called over her shoulder before disappearing into the woods.

"Well that was rude," Ino said, her pout causing the men of Team Kakashi to take an involuntary step backwards to avoid the fallout of any further outrage. But Ino just smiled, and turned to the men and said, "Spread the word, I'm pregnant. And you can tell Choji that I got to you first!"

Without further ado, Ino left the training grounds to hunt down more of her friends to tell her excellent news.

Sakura found herself at the pharmacy down the block from her apartment staring at their bright pink selection of home pregnancy exams.

"Fucking pink boxes," she muttered, grabbing the brand that promised "99.9% accuracy." With a mind of its own, her hand reached out and grabbed a second and then a third box, just in case.

Sakura bought the tests and made her way home in a daze, and the next thing she knew she was standing in her bathroom with one of the pregnancy test boxes on the sink, directions face-up.

"Take off cap, pee on stick, re-cap, wait, read window. Not difficult. I can do this." Her hands shook as she opened the package and pulled out the test. "I can do this."

Sakura was tearing open the third box, when she heard Kakashi call her name from her living room.

"I'm in the bathroom," she shouted back, before opening the door.

"And why precisely are you inviting me into the bathroom? Sexy shower time?" Kakashi teased, as he poked his head into the door. Only he wasn't expecting to see Sakura's usually spotless, blue and white tiled bathroom floor to be littered with cardboard boxes, tiny paper instruction manuals, half a box of used tissues, a nearly empty pitcher of water, and a falling apart pink-haired kunoichi.

"Sakura?"

She pulled out the third test from its cardboard home and shook it at him. "I need to take another test, but I can't pee anymore. I drank all this water," she pointed the plastic stick at the pitcher, "and nothing."

"I'm sure you'll have to use the bathroom in no time," he said in a soft, talk-you-down-from-the-ledge voice, before taking the plastic stick and the box out of her hands. He glanced down at the crushed cardboard, and finally realized why Sakura was so distraught.

He slowly raised his head and met her gaze. They stared at each other for what felt like hours, but was little more than a minute, before Sakura had to turn her face away.

"The first two came up positive," she told the toilet.

Kakashi felt a lump forming in his throat. He tried to swallow past it, but he couldn't.

"So I need to be able to pee to take this one," Sakura said, grabbing the plastic stick back from his loose grip. "Like they say, third times a charm. So it will surely be negative. And then I can go on pretending like this never happened. We can go on like this never happened."

"Sakura," Kakashi whispered, "it's not going to be negative."

"Don't jinx it! Get out! Go warm up some sake, and we can celebrate me not being pregnant right after I am done with this."

Before Kakashi could protest, Sakura shoved him out the door, slammed the door in his face, and locked the door. Knowing that the lock was not going to keep the Copy Ninja out of her bathroom, she did a rapid set of hand seals and pulsed her chakra through the door-frame to seal the room with a jutsu she learned that all of the Hokages used to seal their chambers at night to prevent assassination attempts while they slept.

"Shit," she heard Kakashi mutter, as her jutsu blocked his attempt to pick her bathroom lock. "Come on Sakura, just let me in."

"Why, to hold my hand when I pee? I'll be out as soon as possible."

"Fine," he replied, despite not having much choice in the matter. "But I could hold your hand while you wait for the results."

"Not necessary."

Kakashi pressed his forehead to the cool wood of the door. He held his breath as he listened for any signs of distress. He released the breath as he heard the toilet flush. A quick glance at the wall clock in Sakura's living room told him he had three minutes before shit would hit the fan. His eyes stayed riveted to the second hand as it counted down 180 clicks. His breath held again.

The jutsu fell from the door, and Kakashi stood up straight as he heard Sakura unlock the door. When she didn't open the door to come out, he opened it to go in.

Sakura's hands were pressed down on the cool porcelain of her sink, her head bowed, her pink bangs blocking her face.

"Sakura, let me see."

She passed the plastic stick that was sitting on counter between her hands over her shoulder.

Kakashi looked at the plus sign and knew that it meant that Sakura was pregnant. She was going to have a baby. His baby. She had spent every night for the past three months in his bed. And he couldn't be happier that now he not only had Sakura, but he would have a child with her as well.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her hair.

"I love you," he whispered. "Never doubt that I love you."

"I don't. But this wasn't part of the plan."

"What plan?" he asked, glad that his smirk was hidden in the pink hair that he loved so much.

"The plan. You know, I have a career. I am a kunoichi. I can't just give that up."

"Who's asking you to?"

Kakashi felt Sakura stiffen in response to his words. And then she turned, pushed his arms away from her sides, and stepped back as far as she could to give them some distance. In this position, her back was pressed a little too firmly into the rim of her pedestal sink to be comfortable, and she used the minor ache that was beginning to form in her lower back to anchor herself.

"I can't be what I am and still be a mother. I don't have enough fingers and toes to count how many times I've come within a hair's-breadth from death. And you," she shouted, stabbing her finger into his chest, "how many lives do you have left to give to the village? Do you have any to spare for a family?"

As if she was just realizing what she said, she moaned and turned to the side so she could double over at the waist. "Oh god, this will never work. We can't do this."

"Sakura, you're panicking."

"Damn right, I'm panicking. Why the hell are you so calm?"

He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her upright to look her in the eyes.

"I am calm because I'm trying to hide how ecstatic I am. Remember Ino from this morning? I would be happier than her at this news, if you weren't in the middle of having a massive panic attack. I don't need to convince myself that this is a good thing. I need to convince you."

"So convince me, dammit!"

The fear had managed to leech out of her system, and Kakashi couldn't help but become aroused by the fire that burned in her eyes.

His mask was gone before she could blink, and his mouth was pressed to hers before she could resist his advance.

Sakura was quickly swept up into his frenzied passion, and she found herself drowning in his hard, drugging kisses. When he pressed his body into hers to feel her body against his, she let out a soft moan of pain due to the return of the pressure of the sink against her lower back.

He didn't waste a breath, and reach down to lift her up onto the sink. Sakura followed his lead, and wrapped her legs around his waist to align their hips. The feeling of her hot center pressed against him had him pulling away from her mouth to let out a low groan.

"I'm too old for this shit," he said as his mouth made its way down her neck. Between his open mouthed kisses and gentle bites that he knew would drive her wild, he told her, "I'll take a desk job, a real nine to five. We'll get day care during the day, and I'll watch the kiddies at night. You don't have to give up anything."

"Desk job? Kiddies?" she asked between moans. She let her fingers pull down the zipper of Kakashi's jonin vest, and push the vest off of his shoulders.

He tore her shirt open, straight down from collar to hem. His hands palmed her lace-covered breasts, pausing only to let her pull his shirt off. His lips tugged at her nipples through the soft lace of her bra.

"Tsunade wants me to take over for her until Naruto is ready to become Hokage," he replied, his mouth returning to hers as his hands removed what was left of her shirt along with her lacy bra. His hands moved down to trace her slit and to firmly rub her clit through her black spandex shorts.

"And if you let me, we'll have a whole brood of pink-haired, lazy ninja brats," he continued.

Sakura unfastened his pants and freed him from his boxers.

"Where will we live?" she panted, stroking him harder than most would like, but just like he loved.

"We'll buy a house. Your pick. You see, I am actually quite rich," he replied with a devastatingly sexy smirk. His hands dragged off her shorts and panties in one go.

"Cheapskate," she muttered with a smile, before hooking her ankles behind his hips to pull him up against her again.

He couldn't resist the feel of her wetness pressed against his length, and he fought to maintain his logic.

"Let me," he begged, rubbing the head of his cock teasingly against her clit. "Please, let me."

"I want you inside," she whispered, taking his lips and pouring her love, anxiety and fear into her kiss. She pulled away and captured his face between her hands. She waited until his eyes were on hers, so he would know that she meant what she said. "Inside of my heart. Make me a home."

And he slid into her, and whispered, "You are my home. Let me be yours."

Tears slid down her cheeks, and she knew that everything would be okay. She and Kakashi were going to have a baby, their very own tiny little bundle of joy, and it was going to be okay. Or at least it would be for Sakura and Kakashi. Tsunade, on the other hand, had a few things to answer for: like how she just happened to mess up the contraceptive injections for the three women in the village that she cared about the most. Accident? Coincidence? Not likely.