A/N: The second part of sasusakuparadise's request (I would like to request SS first kiss :3 Your art is really pretty 3 You can do both fanfic and fanart ^^) ;)
Enjoy!

OCTOBER FEVER
"Lips and tongues lie. But actions never do. No matter what words are spoken, actions betray the truth of everyone's heart."
-Sherrilyn Kenyon

Haruno Sakura hated October.

She didn't have anything against the month itself. Though it marked the true beginning of the colder seasons – and she wasn't particularly looking forward to treating shinobi with frostbites, thank you very much – she actually kind of liked how the leaves turned from simple greens to various shades of red, orange and yellow and the smell of pumpkin that seemed to hung in the air, especially close to the end when the Halloween was nearly there, was a plus in her books as well.

All in all the month wasn't so bad if not for a tiny little problem and it was slowly but surely driving her crazy. Said problem that was so hazardous to her mental health was something the medics in Konoha liked to call the October Fever.

It wasn't a fever per se. It was more like suddenly all of the shinobi – the elites, the genins and the Academy students alike – lost some much-needed IQ points around that time and couldn't get them back until the month was finally over.

The amount of stupid injuries they were forced to treat every single year during that time only seemed to prove it. Sakura couldn't even count the number of times an elite jounin came to her office, because he or she had bumped into a tree with enough forced to leave them with a concussion or because they had sprained their ankle on a perfectly even pavement. The genins varied from those who were simply facing a period of bad luck to those who had morons for senseis who had yet to understand what their job actually entailed. Then there were the students who, for some bizarre reason, couldn't seem to grasp the concept that the pointy side of the kunai was the potentially lethal part and so Sakura was left with numerous case of bone-deep lacerations, stab wounds and sometimes even cut off limbs.

Yes, October was definitely not her favourite time of the year.

Sakura sighed for the nth time, forcing back the urge to bang her head against the nearest wall in a rather pointless attempt to vent her frustration.

Her shift was supposed to end in an hour, but at this rate she was going to be forced to stay for at least another three or four. They were horribly short on staff and the patients kept coming. The waiting area of the hospital was so crowded it was actually hard to pass through the corridor without harassing someone by accident.

Sakura herself had already touched too many butts and other bits, both male and female, to last her a lifetime or two. Thankfully nobody seemed to notice or was simply in too much pain to care.

She moved down the hall with a stack of gauzes and bandages in her arms. After calling the nurse station to fetch them for her six times in the last half an hour, she had decided to go and collect them herself. It gave her a perfect excuse to get the hell out the examination room and away from the patients that were probably still waiting outside with impatience written all over their faces.

Sometimes she wondered if they realized it was their own fault that they needed to stand there in the first place. For some reason, she highly doubted they did.

Another sigh escaped her lips as she moved through the lobby and by the main entrance. She had almost passed by, when something caught her attention. Taking a few steps back, she looked outside and her eyes immediately found what she had almost missed.

A group of three kids – two boys and a girl – was slowly making their way to the doors. One of the boys was carrying the girl on his back, while the other boy was limping slightly and cradling his left arm to his chest. Sakura would have been able to identify those three even in her sleep.

It was Team 15, managed by none other than Uchiha Sasuke himself.

After the war, life had gone back to normal surprisingly fast.

Sasuke actually decided to come back to the village and climbed up the ranks with no difficulty, becoming chunin and then jounin within two years of the end of his year-long probation. Everyone expected him to apply for ANBU the moment the required six months of taking missions as a jounin were over, but Sasuke had other plans. To the astonishment of many, his former teammates included, he had asked for a genin team. The idea of the ex-avenger herding children and patiently explaining things to them was beyond hilarious. When she had first heard about it, Sakura was positive that the revenge and all those evil master plots of doom had broke him and Sasuke had officially lost his mind. There was simply no other explanation.

Nobody really knew if it was truthfully his decision or if Kakashi, who was now the Hokage, had something to do with it and was simply trying to punish his former pupil in a rather creative way, but shortly afterwards the Uchiha did end up with three ten-year-olds to teach and care for.
Ringo, Shin and Misaki were a colourful bunch.

All three were orphans who had entered the Academy mostly because there was little else they could do. They didn't have any money and they also had no idea about their last names, so Konoha did with them what had always been done in such cases and simply enrolled them.

Shin was shy and mute, which made for quite a challenge when you were trying to communicate with him. Misaki swore like a sailor, even though she was only ten, and had temper to match that nasty tongue of hers. In comparison to his teammates, Ringo was relatively normal, though he dressed like a colourful hobo – admittedly, not the wisest fashion choice in their line of work - and preferred reading to training.

The three genin had been obviously vary and probably afraid of Sasuke at the very beginning, but they were quick to realize that their sensei was actually kind of awesome and now they followed him around like lost puppies, when their team wasn't on a mission. To say that the trio adored the ground he walked on would have been an understatement of the century. The hilarity of the situation wasn't lost on Sakura and she often laughed when Naruto teased their wayward ex-teammate about it.

She waited for them in the lobby. When they were finally inside, she could easily spot why Misaki couldn't walk – even with her shoes still on, the swelling on her right foot was clearly visible. Ringo's arm was purple and bended in a way that was probably very painful and he had a laceration on his calf that was a reason behind his limp. As far as she could tell Shin was unharmed, though she would still need to examine him to make sure. Overall, the trio looked like they had gone through hell and back, bathed in mud and then rolled in some blood just for good measure.

"What happened to you?" She asked when they approached her.

"Fucking C rank and a dimwit of a client, " Misaki supplied with a dark look and the boys nodded in agreement.

Sakura raised an eyebrow, but didn't question them any further. She signalled for them to follow her and they did, leaving a trail of dirt behind them. They entered the ER section of the hospital in no time and since she wasn't in a mood to actually ask people to let them pass in a somewhat nice manner, she simply yelled at them to move out of her way. The mass of bodies parted in front of her. No one was stupid enough to get on her bad side when she was already growling under her breath.

When they entered the examination room Sakura had been occupying for the better part of the day, she asked them to take a seat on the bed. She then disposed of her cargo and called the nurse station since she needed their files to proceed with their treatment. One of the nurses appeared in the room two minutes later with her request, because Sakura could apparently get her personnel to do what they were paid to do anyway only when she was acting like a royal bitch. The woman was out the door as fast as she came.

"So, what exactly happened on that mission?" She asked as she looked over Ringo's arm and then started to mend the horribly broken bone. The boy winced, but otherwise didn't give any indication that it hurt, which was sort of impressive, considering his arm had been broken in four different places.

"The man we were escorting lied and we ended up fighting with some rouge nins instead of the thugs that were mentioned in our mission scroll," Ringo said through clenched teeth. "Sensei wasn't pleased."

It was probably a huge understatement. If she knew Sasuke as well as she thought she did, that client of theirs was actually very lucky to be alive.

"And you ended up battling with them in a puddle?"

"Something like that," Shin signed to her with a smirk when she looked up. "It was raining."

"Aa," she commented before going back to work.

After setting Ringo's arm, she put it in a cast and proceed to seal the gash on his leg. After that she instructed him to take it easy for at least another two weeks or so. The bones in his arm were healed, but they still needed time to recover from the injury and if he decided to use it during training or for some other strenuous activity, they would probably break again. When she was sure he was otherwise okay, saved from some minor scrapes and bumps, she moved on to Misaki. The girl started to curse as soon as Sakura put her hands on her injured foot and didn't stop until the painful procedure was over. She too was fitted with a cast and advised to rest. Shin, it turned out, had two bruised ribs and some burns on his hands. His jawbone had been fractured as well, but out of the three, he was in the best shape.

She was in the process of filling their examination charts when one of them cleared their throat.

"What?"

She glanced at them over Misaki's file and played witness to a peculiar exchange of glares. It looked like they wanted to tell her about something, but neither of them was willing to do so. When the glaring failed to work, they started to elbow each other until Sakura decided that enough was enough and stepped in before a real fight could break.

"Stop it!" She ordered briskly as she slammed her hand onto her desk with enough force to make it crack. "Explain."

They were still sending not-so-subtle glares in each other's direction, but they listened to her all the same.

"It's about Sasuke-sensei," said Ringo. "We think he got injured during the mission, but he refused to come here with us."

"And?"

Misaki smiled sweetly and Sakura instantly had a bad feeling about whatever was going to come out of the girl's mouth. She, of course, didn't fail to deliver.

"And he is a fucking moron, but it would suck big time if he kicked the fucking bucket?"

"Misaki!"

"What?" She said with a shrug. "It's true."

Sakura massaged her temples to fend off the upcoming migraine. If Team 7 wasn't going to finish her off, Sasuke's team was surely a runner for the job.

"Okay," she said after a moment. "Can someone tell me why do you think he is injured?"

Her answer was silence. When it stretched for the next five minutes, she looked up and fixed them with a hard stare.

"Look, I want to help you, but I need to know what's wrong before I go. I can't just leave without saying anything."

"You can't?" Asked Ringo with a dubious expression.

Getting called on your bluff by a ten year old was probably one of the most embarrassing situations she had even found herself in.

"I probably could," she amended. "But I still would like to know."

"His eyes bled," Shin signed so fast she was barely able to catch it. "He said it was nothing, but his face was covered in blood."

"And he was staggering too!" Ringo added. His face, as well as those of Shin and Misaki, showed worry.

They were always like this, whenever their sensei got injured, even if it was minor at best. It all went down to the fact that they were orphans and no-names in a world where a name was everything. They had been shunned and left to their own devices for years and it always left a mark on a person, no matter how strong he or she was, and they were only children. Sasuke had probably been the first person to truly care about them, which had made him someone unquestionably important in their eyes. They cared for him too and were unbelievably afraid to lose him – the only semblance of a family they had.

"Was there anything else?"

They shook their heads.

"Okay, I'll go treat him," she announced with a heavy sigh. After she healed him, she was going to punch him through a wall for scaring those kids like that."You should all go home and rest, but I guess you'll follow me? "

Three heads bobbed up and down without hesitation.

There was a moment of silence before Sakura groaned in frustration and moved to get the emergency medical bag from the cabinet near the door.

"Alright, let's go," she announced when she had the bag slung over her shoulder.

Whatever doubt there was in her mind about doing this disappeared when they follow her out with relieved smiles on their faces.

-o-o-o-

Sasuke's house was located at the outskirts of the village. It was a small one-story building with a living room, bathroom, two bedrooms and a moderately sized kitchen, but there was a huge backyard which the last Uchiha had transformed into his personal training ground. The old Team 7 often met up there to stretch and practise taijutsu, though Sasuke had never actually invited them over.

It was just one of the unspoken rules of their team. What one member of the team owned, the rest could use – of course, within reason – and it somehow worked.

Personally, Sakura thought that the place suited her withdrawn teammate perfectly. It was private, quiet and simple, just as Sasuke liked things to be.

Of course the only downfall was the fact that it was far away from literally everything.

It had taken her and the three injured genins almost an hour to get there, since the kids couldn't hop onto the rooftops after her and she had been unwilling to leave them alone.

Or she was simply unwilling to face Sasuke without some sort of back-up.

Even though they had been on numerous missions together in the past four years and met up quite regularly to hang out or to train, there was always a third party present. She was still wary of him, as stupid as it sounded. The bond they had shared before he left hadn't been as strong as the one each of them had with Naruto, at least not on Sasuke's part. There were things between them that couldn't be ignored and their friendship, if it could even be called that, was strained at best. To top it all, the Uchiha had been acting differently towards her and Sakura didn't know what to think about his sudden change of heart. She was afraid that he was going to break her heart once again if she got too close. On the other hand she desperately craved his affection. The thing was she couldn't bring herself to trust her gut anymore when it came to him. She needed a proof that his feelings towards her had indeed changed – a declaration or even a simple sorry would do. There was no way in hell she was going to reverse to her older self just to hear him say that he cared. This time he needed to do it on his own without one of her declarations pushing him forward. Even if it was going to take four more years or even a decade, she could wait. She had all the time in the world.

They stopped at the front door and Sakura knocked. There was no response, so she did it again. After a few minutes of silence the door opened to reveal the fatigue incarnated.

"You look like shit, sensei," said Misaki and Sakura couldn't disagree.

His face was ashen, there were deep shadows under his eyes and he was barely able to stay upright. If he wasn't gripping the doorframe with enough force to make his knuckles turn white, she had no doubt he would have fallen face first to the ground a while ago.

Through her years-long career as a medic, Sakura discovered that there were difficult patients, there were patients that grated on her nerves and there were also those few special cases that made her want to punch them through the nearest wall.

And then there was this asshole.

Sasuke, as per usual, was in a league of his own. He avoided hospitals like a plague and if he ever ended up there, he was out before anyone could blink, let alone point out that he was only going to hurt himself further if he didn't stay where he was.

She sweared he had as much common sense as tomatoes he was so fond of, if not less.

"You. Are. An. Idiot." She said, empisizing each word with a jab of her finger to his chest.

His only response was a raised eyebrow, which made her even angrier, if that was actually possible. She caught him by the arm and manhandled him inside. The kids followed and Sakura was sure she had heard them chuckle. The glare Sasuke gave them when the three were all seated in the living room was an indication enough that she did actually hear it.

"Go to the guest room and sleep," he ordered and after a little bit of whining they listened to him, though Sakura had a sneaky suspicion they were going to try to eavesdrop on to their conversation anyway. She didn't want them to go, but she couldn't ask them to stay either without making the situation even more awkward.

She set down the bag near the couch. After pulling out a notepad and a pencil, she took her seat next to Sasuke and started the examination. It became obvious pretty quickly that he had overused his Sharingan to the point where he was probably seeing spots and dancing lights when he moved too aburtly. The staggering Ringo had mentioned could also be attributed to it. Kekkei genais were always tricky to heal – years of experience weren't enough to prepare you for something so unique. Working with doujutsu users was even worse, because not only each pair, but each eye was different to a point where it was actually possible to find two vastly different entanglements of chakra pathways in one person.

The type of Sharingan Sasuke possesed was supposedly indestructable and eternal, not that Sakura believed it. While it helped with fending off blindness to the point where it wasn't a serious issue anymore, it still could cause severe headaches and serious neurological damange if not used cautiously.

She wrote it all down into the notepad she she could transfer it to his hospital file later and started the healing process.

"I told you to stop overusing it," she chaised him, gently probing at his abused optical nerves with her chakra and slowly easing down the strain. "Do you want to end up as a vegetable? Seriously, it's like you're deliberately trying to piss me off or something with the way you're acting and I would appreciate it if you stopped doing it. You're not a little kid and even children know that when you get a booboo you need to show it to someone. You're not five anymore, if you haven't noticed. Besides, I have other patients too, you know, and I can't go running to your side every single time your stupid ego gets in the way of common sense."

She patted him on the cheek when she was done and he scowled at her, his left eye twiching in annoyance. Taking no offense in his gloominess – because Sasuke was always like this, even when he was in a relatively good mood – she went to the kitchen to make them some tea. He followed her and she could feel his glare on the back of her neck as she put the leaves into the teapot and then poured scalding-hot water over them when it boiled. The aroma of jasmine and rose petals entered her nose and she smiled as she brought the teapot and two cups over to the low kitchen table. She set them down and turned around to look for some cookies to go with her tea. Sasuke didn't like sweets, but ever since Team 15 started hanging around his house, he stocked on a few boxes of various treats just in case.

"What happened anyway?" Sakura asked with her back to him. She was looking through the cupboards, but wasn't successful in finding anything just yet. "I didn't ask the kids, but judging by theirs and yours injuries it was something serious. They mentioned that your client had lied on a mission application form." She glanced at him briefly over her shoulder before resuming her search. "I hope you didn't strangle the guy. I know you don't like when people do it ever since Waterfall, right?"

A box of choclate buscits appeared in her line of sight.

"Acha!" She yelled triumphyly, waving the box around like some sort of a weapon. "Anyway, it's a shame that they still don't know how to deal with this, ne? I mean Tenten was telling me the other day-"

Whatever she was going to say got swallowed by Sasuke's lips which were suddenly slanted against hers. She yelped in surprise and the box she had been holding only a moment ago hit the floor with a thud. Sasuke was quick to take advanatge of her open mouth. His tongue slipped past her lips, swirling slowly against the tip of hers in an invitation. She had half a mind to shove him away, because there was no way in hell she was going to let him kiss her into oblivion without explenation, but then he sucked on her lower lip and she was a goner.

It was heaven and hell, the way his mouth moved with hers, as if he was trying to devour her. She was hot all over and Kami-sama, he was so insanely good at this she kind of regreted not kissing him sooner.

One of his arms sneaked around her waist to bring her flush against him, while the other got tangled in the hair at the base of her neck. He pulled at it roughly to change the angle and she moaned breathly in the milisecond between one kiss and the other.

She knew she was flirting with disaster.

Damn, she was making out with it like there was no tomorrow, but she couldn't bring herself to care. It was what she had dreamed about for years and it was better than anything she could have ever hoped for. If he kept it up, she was afraid she was going to forgive him for the sake of getting him to kiss her like that again.

They were both breathless when they finally pulled apart. Sasuke's forehead was resting on hers as they panted, their breaths mixing together in the almost non-existent space between their lips.

"You talk too much," he whispered. His voice was husky and low, and it sent delicious shivers down her spine.

Sakura huffed in indignation.

Her gaze was clouded with desire as she took in Sasuke's slightly flushed cheeks and his mussed hair, and those eyes of his which burned with feelings she couldn't quite identify. There were million and one things she wanted to say, but words had left her and all she could really do at this point was stare at him, slightly confused and utterly boneless in his hold. She had known he cared, but it was something different and so unexpected she was seriously considering pinching herself just to check if it wasn't a dream.

Luckily for her, Sasuke was a very impatient man.

With a smirk that bordered on a first real smile she had ever seen on his face, he kissed her again, successfully putting a stop to her inner ramblings.

Maybe she could learn to like October just a little bit?