Notes: uh…not at all serious. It tries to be serious and then it goes back to trying to be funny. It's not 'romance,' either - more...pre-romance? Yeah, let's go with that. Set a few years after canon, so the trio's about nineteen or twenty. Also, the title's pulled from 31 days on livejournal.

Warnings: Language? And a calmer Sasuke who was forcefully socialized by Naruto (he's still an awkward turtle, though). Probably some typos, too.

The Cessation of Panic

1.

Sakura opens her door to find a beaming Naruto with a groaning Sasuke slung over his back.

"No," she says, already trying to edge back into her apartment. "There's a hospital, take him there. And Naruto, you're cleaning the blood off my doormat later."

He waves her off and takes a step forward. Sakura would force him back but she's already gotten two notices from her landlord about her violent tendencies and how he really doesn't appreciate them.

"You know how the hospital is," whines Naruto. "Remember what happened last time? That nurse was scarier than Orochimaru—"

"Yes, I remember," she says quickly, pushing away the memories of too-long needles and a pouting, defeated nurse. "But she's gone and it's safe to take him there. So. Take him. Now. Before he dies and we get in trouble for losing the last Uchiha."

"I won't," he says, grinning. He still manages to look happy despite the sweet and blood trekking through the grime on his face. "'Cause I brought the idiot to a medic, but the medic refused to treat him, so Granny's gonna go apeshit on you—"

"Tsunade-sama adores me," she snaps. Sasuke chooses that moment to groan again. If Sakura were a weaker-willed person, she would have caved then. As it is, she just points down the hall where the stairs are. "Take him," she says, "before I punt you out."

Naruto considers this for three seconds. "No," he says, shoving past her. He talks over her indignant squawk cheerfully: "See, I know that you don't like trashing your stuff, so if you're gonna kill me, you're gonna do it later, which is fine. But first." He drops Sasuke onto her new sofa; Sakura closes her eyes as blood starts to seep into the brown fabric. "Heal him, would you? It'd suck to have him die now."

"…I'm going to punt you to Sand," she promises, slamming the door shut behind her. "And then you can explain to Gaara why you're going to need to stay there for a few months, because if I see you again after that…"

"Yeah, yeah. Your bag in your room?"

"By the door," she says as he pads off. Sakura kneels on the carpet by the sofa and eyes Sasuke. From the way he's groaning, he probably got hit on the head (given that the idiots had only been on a B-rank, she suspects that they were doing something stupid and this is the result). An abdominal wound, quickly wrapped in the field, is slowly oozing blood.

"It's a good thing you two weren't far from the village," she says to herself. Her hand reaches up to touch Sasuke's temple; she's still not confident enough to mess with head injuries, but she can at least diagnose it and decide if he really should go to the hospital.

Her bag is tossed to her side. Sakura rolls her eyes as Naruto flops down beside her, leaning forward and pointing at Sasuke's stomach. "That," he declares, "is mostly my fault. Uh. He's not gonna die, right? 'Cause that's really the only reason you'd be touching him without the intent to kill…"

"He has a mild concussion," she says. "I don't know why he's making so much noise. He's probably got a low tolerance for pain."

Sakura waits, half wondering if Sasuke is going to pull of a medical miracle and open his eyes to glare at her. He doesn't, so she rolls her own eyes again and opens up her bag.

"You two are staying the night here," she says, sighing as she gets to work. "Naruto, go clean my doormat."

"Sure thing—"

"No clones."

"…Mean, Sakura-chan, that's just mean…"

2.

"Sakura."

"…Why the hell are you in my doorway."

Sasuke's nose scrunches like she's said something very offensive. He's cultured, according to Naruto; Sasuke doesn't swear, Sasuke can't hold his liquor, and Sasuke most definitely cannot go to strip bars.

"I tried," Naruto had once confided in her, "I really did, but he just acted like he had a porcupine up his ass and made one of the girls throw a drink at him."

"I'm injured," says Sasuke. He holds up his arm like a child showing proof; Sakura stares dispassionately at the loping gouge going from his wrist to his elbow. It might do permanent damage, the medic in her absently assesses; Sakura just thinks that these idiots need to get it in their head that she's not their personal doctor.

(She is, technically, but only in the field and today is Sunday which means it's her day off.)

"There's a thing called a hospital," she starts. "I recognize that Orochimaru was mean to you and probably never took you to one, but they're wonderful things. You should go there. Now."

She grabs the doorknob and tries to swing the door closed. Sasuke jams his foot in between, and Sakura smiles pleasantly at him as she forces some chakra into her hand.

To his credit, he does not flinch as one of his toes cracks.

"…I can pay you?" he offers.

"That's fine," she says airily, dropping her hand from the door to wave it around. "You're just a chuunin, you should save your money."

Sakura and Ino compete to see who can make Sasuke scowl more in a day (if one of them manages to make him cry, it's an instant win, though it's an as-of-yet undocumented occurrence). As of now, Sakura just edged into the lead because Sasuke's scowling at her like she personally murdered his cat.

"Speaking of money," she adds, gesturing at his arm, "you should probably get that looked at before it gets infected. Drugs are expensive, you know."

His scowl morphs into something resembling a pout. Sakura wishes she had a camera.

"I have gossip," he says as she reaches for the doorknob again. Sakura raises her eyebrows at him, so he quickly adds, "About Ino."

"…You," she repeats, "have gossip about Ino. You."

He nods.

The war in her mind lasts for only a few seconds. What Sasuke considers gossip is probably something as innocuous as Ino going out on a date with some civilian boy, but it's a weird insight into the way his mind works so she shrugs.

"But if I don't like it," she warns, moving back so there's room for him to enter, "I'm breaking all your toes and reopening the wound."

Sasuke mutters something like 'the healer's oath.' Sakura pretends not to hear him as she motions him over to the ruined sofa; she's going to have to get a new one, eventually, though something in her gut tells her that there's no point. Her teammate sits gingerly, like he's a king being asked to settle for a paper throne.

"So," she says, sitting cross-legged in front of him, "what's this gossip?"

When she drags his arm away from his chest, a very faint wince flutters across his face. Sakura considers asking him what he did to get cut up this badly, but that would imply caring and for a little while longer, she wants to pretend that she doesn't. She's not like Naruto, who wears his smiles for everyone to see and enjoy; she wants to be earned, and Sasuke…has never done anything but make her watch his back as he walked ahead.

Chakra covers her hands as she grasps his wrist. The cut is clean and relatively shallow; she imagines that it stings more like a paper cut than anything else, though the length of it is what is confusing.

"It's about Ino…" says Sasuke vaguely. She looks up from his arm to make a face; he looks away, grudgingly adding, "It's about Ino and…the idiot."

"Which idiot?" she asks, because to Sasuke, everyone is an idiot.

He glances back at her, frowning. "Our idiot."

Sakura feels a frown of her own coming on. "Naruto? Naruto and Ino?" Something in his face changes - something like a full body wince that comes from saying something he shouldn't have - and Sakura laughs, incredulous. "Naruto and Ino?" she repeats, snickering. Her hand moves up his arm, slowly healing another part. "What were they doing? Where?"

He tells her as she works, and when she worms out the best details she does him a favor and fixes his toe, too.

"Just don't think this is a regular thing," she says later as she washes her hands in her bathroom sink. She can hear Sasuke putting his shoes back on by the door. "I'm serious, you know. Very serious."

She thinks he might be rolling his eyes as he says, "I'll bring better gossip, next time."

He's gone by the time she charges out, soapy hands and all.

3.

Five Sundays after the first Sunday, Naruto and Sasuke show up at her doorstep again.

Sakura considers not opening the door. She can feel their chakra signatures, steady and strong; they aren't too roughed up, and if she continues to hide out in the pillow fort she'd made on her bed that morning, it'll be without a guilty conscience.

She stays huddled for a minute. The knocking on her door steadily turns to banging. Her gaze falls to her nightstand, where the newest letter from her landlord sits. It reads, in simple terms: 'dear tenant, I appreciate that you are paying to live in my space, but if your friends continue to harass the other occupants I will kick you out into the street. Good day.'

A crack splits the air. Sakura closes her eyes, but she doesn't hear anything falling to the ground so the boys have only fractured her door, not broken it completely.

"Naruto," she mumbles. His name is a curse itself to her. She takes a deep breath and flings all the pillows and blankets off her in one fidgety movement; the cold starts to seep in immediately, and she jams her feet into a pair of tattered slippers and shoves an old sweater over her head. Instead of charging them real money, she thinks as she shuffles to the door, she should make them bring her coffee - three, yeah, three cups of coffee for each house call.

Because at this rate, she doesn't have to do anything to encourage them; it's already a pattern she's doomed to be a part of.

It turns out that Naruto and Sasuke were being idiots again (this should just become the regular conclusion she draws when one of them gets injured, because it's not like any normal mission can hurt them). Naruto's got a healing cut along the side of his face and Sasuke, slightly more human and banned from using certain convenient eye techniques, has two cracked ribs and what might be a concussion. Again.

Sakura's starting to wonder if Naruto's hitting him on the head on purpose, just to see what'll happen.

"Hey, hey, Sakura-chan." He tugs at her sleeve like an overeager puppy; Sakura lets him, if only because she's got her hands on Sasuke's shirtless chest and the situation is begging for disaster (she's had more than a few homicidal tendencies toward him). "You should join us next time, you can throw the bastard around into some trees—"

She feels Sasuke's snort, his body shifting under her hands. His skin is cold, like she has always expected, and covered in very small white scars. Human, her mind says quietly, he's very human.

(She ignores the part of her that says he gives as good as he gets.)

"Maybe I will," she says, her eyes trained on her glowing hands. At her side, Naruto whoops with laughter; Sasuke's probably staring at her with that intense look he usually reserves for tomatoes and Naruto. She should be pleased, but mostly she's trying to figure out if there's a way to heal him while keeping the bruises.

By the time she finishes healing Sasuke and determines that he hit his head hard enough to warrant not moving for a few hours, the cut on Naruto's face is nothing but a fading line. He tries edging away from her when her back is turned but Sakura catches him by the wrist, smiles sweetly, and forces him to the sofa.

"Stay," she says, "and think about how I've said that I'm not your personal doctor."

"But Sakura-chan, you are our personal doctor…"

Sasuke snorts again. Sakura takes it back: Naruto's hitting him on the head to make Sasuke more of a human being, and she's slightly worried to admit that it might be working.

(The lurching in her stomach has to do with her not having eaten breakfast yet. It doesn't mean anything else because she won't let it mean anything else.

Sasuke might be human, that's fine. It doesn't change the fact that he inflicted most of the scars on Sakura's insides and how she really doesn't want to add to them.)

4.

Sakura, cackling and not bothering to stop, drags Sasuke inside. Behind them, Naruto shakes with laughter and has to lean against the wall to keep upright.

"She - she owned you!" he sputters, pointing at Sasuke as Sakura shoves him back to the sofa that's practically his by this point. "You were so fucking cocky and she just hit you with a tree—"

"Shut up," mutters Sasuke. He blinks rapidly as Sakura shines a pocket flashlight into his eyes. Not a concussion this time, she decides, but enough of a jarring impact that he'll be out of it for a while. That, or the number of successive concussions (most of them Naruto induced) is making him recover slower.

Sighing, Sakura flings the flashlight at Naruto. "Stop hitting his head," she says, ignoring Naruto's squeak. "It was funny before, but he might actually have something wrong with him now…"

"Oh yeah," says Naruto, snickering. "There's definitely something wrong with him."

Annoyance flashes over Sasuke's face. He picks up his head to glare at Naruto, who quickly throws up his hands.

"I'm going," he says, "totally going. There's no blood this time, Sakura-chan, I can go, right?"

Sakura pokes Sasuke's arm; the scar there is pink and fading, and if her nails were a little longer she could probably provoke it into bleeding again. "Sure," she says. "But you and Sasuke are buying me a new couch soon. And every time you idiots ruin it, you're getting me another one."

"When I'm Hokage," Naruto says, already halfway out the door, "I'll get you a hospital right next to your house. It'll be awesome! The Haruno Hospital!"

He's still laughing when he closes the door behind him. The sound carries back to Sakura's apartment until she hears him thumping down the creaking stairs in the hallway.

"He really is an idiot," she says.

Sasuke gives her a look that reads 'are you really surprised?'

"Nooo…" Sakura scrunches her nose when she realizes she's understanding him. She doesn't want proficiency in Sasuke-speech, she'll leave that to Naruto who'll end up using it as a party trick. "He's a super idiot," she declares instead, sitting on the floor near him to poke at his scar in earnest. "Mostly because of us, but that's okay since he's our idiot."

Sasuke grunts. Sakura rolls her eyes, but can't fight the smile off her face when she sees his lips twitching up.

5.

By now, Sasuke's figured out that Sakura hides a spare key under the potted plant sitting guard by her door. He still knocks before entering, though rather than politeness it's a habit reinforced by Sakura and her ability to throw couches at people who annoy her.

"Oh, joy," she says when he comes into view. She rests her chin on her palm as he eyes the empty space in her living room. "I'm afraid Rusty's gone," she says when he turns to her, confused, "Ino chucked him out. Said it was inhuman to keep him around."

Sakura fakes a sniff. Rusty had been a good couch, for the few months she'd had him. But it doesn't really matter because in another few months Naruto will be making Hokage-salary and Sasuke will be a jounin, and she'll force them to buy her a designer couch…and then probably matching designer furniture.

"Since you're not bleeding all over the floor, I guess you can sit here." She waves inelegantly at the chair across from her at the kitchen table. Sasuke eyes this warily too.

"It's just a kitchen," says Sakura, holding up her cup of tea for emphasis. "I'm not Naruto, I don't booby-trap it."

"…You should," he says, slowly walking in. His legs seem fine, his balance is as perfect as usual, and there really isn't any blood. Knowing him, he might have gotten a hickey from a stranger again and just doesn't want to go to the hospital regardless of past consequences.

Sakura's not bitter. She's not bitter at all. (She's forcefully reminding herself of all the bad to squash out the pieces of good that are coming back, because the good's starting to slowly outweigh the bad and - she doesn't really want that, just yet.)

"So," she says as he finally sits, looking as out-of-place in her kitchen as she bets she would in his, "what is it today? Ino took over your mind? Naruto threw you off the monument? Or best of all - Tsunade-sama drugged you again?"

He holds up his right hand. Sakura stares at it, at his face, and then back at his hand. There is bruising around his pinky finger that indicates that it's broken or fractured, but surely—

"It's broken," he says, putting his hand on the table.

"…It's your pinky. You could have set that yourself. Naruto could have set that."

Sasuke shifts. Her chair creaks under him; it's very old and she's very in need of that designer furniture. "I wanted a medic to make sure it healed properly," he says, somehow managing to make the words sound perfectly reasonable. "It could reduce my handseal speed."

"…Because you and Naruto are normal people who actually use handseals," she deadpans. Then she shrugs. "Fine, though. But remember how you said you'd bring me gossip as payment? I'm waiting."

She bets that he's going to offer something about Ino and Naruto that Sakura hasn't heard of (to be honest, she hasn't heard a lot because the pig has made herself scarce) or maybe some story about Karin and how she regularly tries to get into Naruto's pants to 'restore the Uzumaki clan' (which, now that she thinks about it, could lead to an epic showdown between Karin and Ino). Anything better would be equally shocking and impossible, because Sasuke doesn't get out into society a lot and most of his 'friends' are people he once tried to kill.

So, really - she's not expecting much, but it's always funny to make him talk more.

"I heard," he starts slowly, "that there's an idiot who gets hurt a lot."

Sakura raises her eyebrows but reaches for his hand nevertheless. Among other things, Sasuke is not a storyteller; she'll give him a chance, at the very least.

"He hates going to the hospital," he continues as she examines his finger. It's a clean break; she could set it or she could make it as good as new with a bit of chakra. "So he usually goes to one of his…his teammates."

Chakra, she decides, trying hard not to pay too much attention to his words. She presses down on his finger with two of her own, feeling the shifting of his bone as it mends.

"She gets mad, but she usually heals him anyway." Sakura pulls her hand away, but Sasuke leaves his on the table. She glances at him to find that he's staring very hard at the lime green gloves hanging off the refrigerator handles. "And…he likes going there. To her."

She drums her fingers on the table and tilts her head. Sasuke still isn't looking at her, so she asks loudly, "Are you telling me that you've been getting hurt on purpose when you spar with Naruto? And more importantly - that that's your preschool way of telling me that you like me?"

He twitches, but Sakura, unhappily, is now well-versed in Sasuke-speech and knows that to mean 'yeah, you're right, please don't rub it in.' She feels her own eye twitching and wonders if there's a way for her to chuck the kitchen table at him without getting evicted.

"Really?" she says instead, slumping her chair. "Really?"

He coughs.

"Oh, god. That's basically a proposal."

"It's not a proposal—"

"So now you're saying you don't want me?" She glares at him, and Sasuke stares at the floor. "Make up your mind already."

"My mind is made up," he says, raising his eyes to look somewhere over her shoulder. She would snort if she thought it wouldn't hurt his delicate sensibilities. "I - I…" He breaks off, coughing again, and Sakura rolls her eyes.

"You should be happy," she says, rising, "that I'm proficient in Sasuke-speech." He blinks and she continues blithely, "This doesn't change anything, you know. If you come here in the middle of the night to do some creepy 'watch me sleep' thing I'll break your legs—"

"I'm not Naruto either, you know…"

"Yes, I know." She starts to bustle around, pouring more water in the tea kettle and pulling out another cup from the cupboard. Sasuke's eyes are at her back now, she can feel them, and she thinks about how long it'll take him before he works up to looking her in the eye. "By the way, that gossip sucked. I expect you to have something better next time."

He's smiling now. She can feel that, too - she's always been able to tell when he is the slightest bit happy (she remembers being sad because in their childhood, it was rarely due to her).

She taps a fingernail on the counter, her weight shifting from one foot to the other. It's not as simple as saying 'yes' or 'no,' it's more like 'I trust you' or 'I don't,' and she's still not sure which way she falls with him.

For now, though - she makes tea and sets his cup before him. Her own is still half-full, and as she sits she thinks that the room is…comfortable, almost, like this is something she's always been able to do.

Until Sasuke says, poking at his cup, "This isn't poisoned, right?"

"…It is," she says slowly, smiling at him, "but I'm just building my tolerance. You're good on that front, right?"

He winces.

Sakura laughs.

She laughs harder when he takes a sip of the tea and spits it out, because Orochimaru worked with snake-based poison most and Sakura's been experimenting with desert plants.

"Still want me?" she asks, grinning as he washes his mouth out in the sink.

Sasuke wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. He's still not looking at her fully, but he does manage to say, "Yeah, I do."

"…I still don't know if I trust you all the way, you know."

He nods, once. "I know. That's fine."

To her, that means "I know, it's fine because I'll win it back."

(Her stomach is lurching again. She considers the feeling there - something hopeful, something budding - and decides that if he hurts her this time around, she's got more than enough strength to keep him bound while she kicks him into the dirt.)