Sasuke Uchiha was born proud. Even through his clan's massacre, his older brother's actions, and his own ignorance— he still stood tall. After the war, many still feared him and shunned him but he did not waver. He had betrayed his village and then was welcomed back by his old mentor and now Hokage of the Leaf, Kakashi Hatake and was trying to begin to walk down a better path than the past years. Many citizens doubted he could, but none would dare whisper a word too loud in fear he could hear them. But he did— he's Sasuke Uchiha and being overly perceptive is something he considers a blessing and a curse— and even though he did hear the whispers around the village and see the fear in the eyes of those he passed on the streets he did not sway. He could not be broken because Uchihas did not admit to weakness so easily.

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She knew he was coming before he even arrived because his chakra signature was so unlike anyone else's. So thick and heady and absolutely alluring. He had tried to kill her before, and she questioned her sanity over the fact that she felt safe when he was nearby. Sakura was in an empty exam room at the time, getting some paperwork together in a manila folder when in a moment he was in the room with her. She had felt him coming a mile away but was not expecting him to drop by to see her. The window swung open gently and chilly November breeze blew through.

His greeting was brief but she was not expecting more than that even though it had been about half a month since she last even saw him, less spoke to him. He had been busy helping Naruto and the other ninja recovery squads in rebuilding Konoha. She had been busy as well, being second in command under Tsunade at the hospital. But still, she was able to find time with Naruto. Her relationship with Sasuke was very unlike her relationship with Naruto— two days was the most time that has ever gone by before she heard from her blond haired best friend again.

Sasuke was not a man of many words. His dark eyes locked onto hers and he simply says: "Sakura. Something is wrong with my arm."

And immediately the spell her has on her the moment they locked eyes disappears and she zeroes in on his arm and begins examining. Sasuke watches her with muted curiosity as her small hands hold on his arm. The pink hair she has up in her bun is slowly falling out and is framing her face. It tickles his arm and he resists the way his mouth tries to tug up into a smile.

He doesn't smile because he's proud— he wants to be unaffected and strong. And it was because he was so damn proud that he refused to even entertain the thought that he was attracted to her. In his typical fashion, he avoided her at all cost. Seeing her walk down the street in his direction was enough to make carnal desires flare up. He ignored them, suppressed them, and some days it just swelled and showed itself in frustration towards her.

He briefly muses about the thought of seeing her talk to one of the young shopkeepers in town one day last week— Daichi Ishikawa. She had stopped on her way home from work to pick some ingredients up to bring home for supper. Innocent and beautiful, she would pick up different vegetables and examine them and out came Ishikawa from behind his shop's stall to talk with her. They exchanged words, laughed, and he picked out vegetables for her. When she handed him money he refused and shook his head. Sasuke watched as Sakura blushed at something he said and then nodded and laughed. Ishikawa held out his hand to shake hers, and Sakura smiled and did the same. Then off she went, as Ishikawa definitely stared at her behind as she did.

Sasuke, at a nearby weapons shop at the time, squashed the delicate tomato he had been munching on with his hand. It exploded all over the ground and he glared down at it. He was now not only upset about Sakura's exchange with Ishikawa, but he was upset that he squashed his tomato.

The weapons shopkeeper's eyes were as wide as saucers and she looked very afraid.

"I would like to buy this," Sasuke said suddenly, holding up a single metal shuriken. He handed her more money than necessary and told her to keep the rest.

Sasuke was trying to devise an evil plan in his head on what to do with the shuriken to possibly maim Ishikawa when Naruto came up from behind him and put his arm around his neck. This successfully distracted Sasuke from the whole interaction that had just happened and he ended up letting the vegetable shopkeeper live.

This brings him back to reality to realize it had been a couple days since the incident and Sasuke wonders if Sakura had any more encounters with him. Ishikawa obviously found her attractive and that bothered Sasuke for reasons he did not understand.

"Would you please just sit still Sasuke-kun?!" Sakura huffed, her cheeks flushed in frustration and her expertly placed hands glowing a soft green. The chakra reminded him of her eyes, he realized. The fact that the thought even crossed his mind made his blood boil a little more.

He didn't answer her, but didn't dare interrupt her work. She was the easing the pain from the chakra block that had occurred in his arm. His pale arm was flipped, his palm facing upwards, and all the veins in the immediate area where Sakura worked were glowing the same green as her warm chakra. Warm. He grit his teeth- why was he noticing little and insignificant things all of the sudden? The action unconsciously made him clench his fist- which hurt so much he hissed in pain. Sakura's concentration was immediately shattered, and the warm chakra disappeared. He yearned for more.

"Why'd you stop?" He asked flatly. "I'm still in pain, medic."

Sakura guffawed and tucked a strand of hair that had fallen out of her bun to behind her ear. She was trying not to show it, he knows, but she is worried about him. His chakra blocks are occurring more frequently and she can't find the reason why. He's seen the illness that he feels afflicted with before, but only once when he was much younger- his late cousin had this problem.

Again, Sakura raises his arm straight out and runs her fingers around his skin. She stops on a scar and places two fingers atop it, they glow for a split second, and the scar disappears. He chuckles and she raises a brow at him.

"You can leave my scars," he tells her. This is not the reason he's come to see her at the hospital anyway.

She smiles and she makes another scar on his arm disappear, but does not make eye contact with him.

"Trust me, I'm a doctor."

He feels his lips try to form a smile, but he quickly composes himself. His chakra block is not the reason he's come to see her either, or he would've come when it happened two days ago.

He realizes he misses her voice.

"And besides... I only eased the pain in your arm. I haven't removed the block yet. It's..." Pretty serious. And I'm concerned. She doesn't finish her sentence.

He tries to push chakra forward through his arm and the pain is blinding. He almost falls over in his chair, but Sakura steadies him.

"Don't be an idiot!" She scolds him. "You know better than to force chakra into your arm right now! Let me concentrate and don't move your arm at all this time, got it?"

He nods once, the pain settling a bit as immediately she begins her work again. She doesn't speak for the next hour as she works on his arm. Sometimes she shifts position and sometimes she presses her fingers against his skin but never once does her chakra waver. He regards her silently, the way her brow is creased in concentration and the way she closes her eyes at times, seeing things in his arm that he cannot. And he suppresses the way her chakra calls to him, how it ignites his very being, and how he wishes she would never stop. He closes his eyes and takes in the feeling of her warm chakra and her soft breathing. He completely forgets the pain in his arm and he breathes deeply, her smell further putting him at ease at a place he hated being — the hospital. And then... Adrenaline. He feels blood begin traveling to part of his anatomy that he finds completely inappropriate under the circumstances. But he can't stop- her skin is so soft and the chakra is so warm-

"Sasuke-kun..." she says softly. Her chakra disappears from his arm, and she is tapping on his arm where the block was. "I think I did it..." she trails off.

His eyes open and all he can focus on is her. She has not looked up at him yet, and instead is assessing her work. She takes his hand and presses it into a fist and releases, and then she takes a clipboard that was on a side table next to her chair. Without letting go of his arm, she scribbles down something on the board with her free hand. His eyes are locked on her face.

He rather likes her face, he thinks. This is an odd thought for Sasuke, as until the war ended he did not see pretty things. He only saw things for their usefulness and not for any sort of pleasure. Pretty, he comes to the word. He likes her face because it's pretty.

She releases his arm but is still accessing it carefully. "Will you make a fist for me now?"

He does, and there is no pain. Her smile catches him off guard, and she scribbles something down on the clipboard again.

His carnal urges are acting up again, hitting him like a ton of bricks and suddenly the air in the room is much to thin for him to think straight. He feels like he's zeroing in on a target, except he's not in battle with anyone except himself.

"Now... try to direct a small amount of chakra to your hand. Not too much, please- I just want to see..." she says softly.

And he does what she says in an instant, his eyes still fixated on her. He realizes he would do anything she asked of him at this moment. His chakra flows down his arm and to his hand without a problem.

"Did that hurt at all?" She asks him, grabbing hold of her clipboard again.

"No." He answers, and truthfully all he felt was the feeling of a bruise where she had been working. No more pins and needles as before. And there was another feeling, but it was in his pants.

Tell her about it, a sarcastic voice in his head laughs at him. And just like that, he's embarrassed and angry again.

She writes one more note the board and places it down on the table. She gently takes hold of his rolled up sleeve and pulls it down so delicately that he commits to memory what her fingers feel like against her arm. Afterwards she looks up at him, and her jade eyes open wide in a bit of surprise. His gaze is so heated and he looks so flushed that she worries she has done something wrong.

"Sasuke-kun... Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?" he answers her calmly, but his heart is hammering in his chest and he doesn't know why.

"Your sharingan..." she says, and she can't break his line of gaze. His eyes used to scare her— but now, she finds she can't look away because she doesn't want to. She briefly wonders if she is in an illusion now but realizes she would have known the moment he cast one.

Sasuke blinks once, twice, before it registers what she's saying to him. His sharingan and rinnegan are activated. He closes his eyes tightly. He doesn't mean to scare her, especially since the war just ended and people are still uneasy about him.

"Is everything alright, Sasuke-kun?" she asks him, a little worried that his eyes activated after she had just healed him. Have I caused him pain?

"Yes, thank you for healing my arm." He says, standing abruptly. He keeps his eyes closed for fear he's scaring her.

He's out the window in a fraction of a second, and all Sakura feels is the breeze from the crisp fall day in his wake. She smiles softly and stands up, slightly dizzy from healing his arm. It was the end of her day— it now being 5pm, and she had been at work since 5am this morning. It had taken her last bit of chakra for the day to remove the block in his arm.

She tries not to show it, but she is very worried about him. She's been coming in two hours earlier than when her shift begins at the hospital to lock herself up in the lab and run tests on his blood. Today was the third time his chakra had become blocked since the war ended half a year ago. The blocks come randomly— he hadn't been doing anything particularly strenuous since the end of the war. He and Naruto have been together almost every day helping rebuild Konoha into the once great village it was. Not fighting— but actually getting along.

He had mentioned to her once that someone in his family had this same affliction and the Uchiha medics knew how to handle it, and that lit a fire under her to try to solve it herself. She walks back to her office, the clipboard labeled "Uchiha Sasuke" tight against her chest. She feels fatigue setting in, but it is not enough to calm her curiosity.

She shrugged off her white doctor's coat and put it on the back of her chair, releases her long hair from the bun she's had it in all day, and grabs the apple from her lunch (that she didn't have time to eat today). Taking a bite, she locks her office and heads out of the hospital.

She's home before she realizes it as she's so absorbed in her thoughts, and also so tired that she isn't really paying attention to what's happening around her. She thinks she stopped twice on the way home, once at a local takeout place to bring a dinner for two home and once to say hello to little Haru, a four year old boy she healed from a lung illness.

She unlocks the door to her apartment and puts her food and Sasuke's file on the table with her other paperwork. Her table looks like Tsunade's office when she was Hokage. She looks down at her watch and realizes Tsunade will be here any minute now. She gets some sake from the kitchen and pours herself a cup as her mentor bursts into the apartment.

"Good Evening, Sakura!" she announces with a smile. Sakura notes that Tsnuade looks a lot better now that she's not running the village but instead the hospital itself. It's her comfort zone and it shows. "To what do I owe this special occasion that you've invited me over for my dear apprentice?"

Tsunade sits down at her usual spot at the table when she comes over and Sakura pours her some sake and opens the takeout. She doesn't answer at first, but then realizes she doesn't really have to, since Sasuke's paperwork is all over the table.

"The Uchiha, huh?" Tsunade asks.

Sakura nods, sitting down next to her and opening some of his files. "I'm very worried, shishou. I'm so scared that his chakra blocks are going to get worse- because I know they're not getting better. I can remove the blocks, but they're getting increasingly more difficult... and more frequent."

Tsunade nods and her eyes scan some of the results from the blood Sakura had taken from Sasuke.

"His blood looks totally normal... Interesting. Usually someone afflicted with a chakra block has abnormally shaped blood cells for at least twenty-four hours..." Tsunade says, opening the to-go box and helping herself to some shumai.

"He mentioned once that someone else in his clan had some chakra blocking issues and that the Uchiha medics knew how to alleviate the pain."

"Ah. He has no other information than that?"

Sakura shook her head and popped a dumpling into her mouth. "Not that he'll share with me."

Tsunade scoffed. "Well, does he want your help or not?"

Sakura blushed and sipped some sake. "He doesn't know I'm researching his condition."

Sakura's mentor didn't answer, but raised an eyebrow. She should have guessed. Sasuke is not one to ask for help to begin with. But Sakura is right to worry, frequent chakra blocks means that there is a serious issue with the last Uchiha. And he must be in serious pain.

"It would be much easier to find answers if the Uchiha compound wasn't so off-limits..." Tsunade muses, a finger under her chin as she thinks out loud. "Perhaps you could as Kakashi if he would grant you access for the day and see if you can find the medical building?"

It's a good idea, but there's a hole in the plan. "When Kakashi asks me why I want in to the compound, what am I supposed to say?"

Tsunade doesn't say anything. She knows the plan has been squashed before it can come to fruition. Sakura obviously doesn't' want anyone to know that Sasuke has a potentially life-threatening medical conditional. If Kakashi knew, he would have Sasuke doing menial tasks instead of helping with village rebuilding and wall defense.

There is silence for a few more moments before Tsunade speaks again, "You came into my office last week and brought a proposition for a children's hospital in Konoha. I told you we don't have the room right now, nor the proper amount of space... Well. Tomorrow is the village meeting for what will become of the abandoned Uchiha compound. I say you go and propose turning that land into a children's hospital... That I have the fullest faith you can run."

Sakura immediately blushes as the compliment and is suddenly very excited. She's wanted to open this children's hospital ever since the little boy Haru she worked on was healed and hugged her tightly from his hospital bed to thank her.

She wonders then, what Sasuke would think of a hospital on the once great Uchiha compound. She thinks about seeing if she can meet with him tonight to talk about it before she proposes a plan along with other villagers tomorrow at the meeting.

Sasuke.

"But how does that help Sasuke?" Sakura asks.

"You will be allowed on Uchiha land as lead of the future hospital," Tsunade began. "You will lead the teams in the renovations and planning. I'm sure no one will notice if you sneak away for a minute and... do some research of your own."

Sakura thinks for a moment and realizes what a good idea it is. "Two birds with one shuriken."

"Right!" Tsunade laughs. "I knew I made you my apprentice for good reason! I'm on the board for the meeting tomorrow, so I'll have one of the seats next to Kakashi as we listen to the ideas from the villagers. I will back you up, as I would like nothing more to see you begin running a new children's hospital. Think of all the space that would free up in the normal hospital! This is great!"

Sakura nods, reassured that Tsunade will be there tomorrow too.

"Now I would love to grace you with my presence all night long but I have a date tonight!" The blond smiles and announces suddenly.

"A date?" Sakura says skeptically.

Tsnuade gets up and pushes her chair in, but takes her cup of sake with her. "And by 'date' I mean there's a new type sake in town at my favorite bar."

Before Sakura can really answer her master is out the door. She sighs but laughs too, and is glad she had this conversation.

Sakura comes to the conclusion she wants to meet with Sasuke before the town meeting to propose her plan about the new hospital on his family's land. From the beginning Sasuke has refused to be apart of anything that involved that land, he didn't so much come within one hundred feet of it. Still, she felt obligated to bring it up and tell him. So that's when she finds herself walking towards his apartment around 11pm.

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Sasuke had been home for awhile. He was off for the day and had not joined Naruto for lunch or been out much since visiting Sakura at the hospital today. His apartment was dark except for the one lamp on in his bedroom and he laid with his back on the bed and his eyes on the ceiling.

He was brooding.

He didn't know what to make of the feelings he had but he knew that they all involved Sakura in some way, shape, or form. He had known Sakura for many years and never had these feelings become so intense. It's like all of a sudden a switch had gone off in his mind (and his dick) and he wanted nothing more than to bend her over and suck at her neck and mark her as—

— his.

He swallowed hard. He comes to the conclusion that something is very wrong. Maybe he's sick and maybe he needs to see doctor —

— like Sakura.

He sighs rather loudly and puts an arm over his forehead. His eyes close and he tries to clam his mind and body. He even thinks of speaking with Naruto to ask him if he's ever encountered such a feeling before and how he overcame it.

But first.

First.

He needed to alleviate some pressure. He unzips his pants.

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She feels his chakra before she knows whether or not he's even home. She walks up to his door and before she can raise her hand to knock (courtesy, of course, he must have felt her coming too), she hears something rather peculiar from his open window.

"... feels so good.. I've waited so long... ."

Sakura turns bright red. It was Sasuke's voice. She was just so curious though- so curious with the slightest tinge of hurt- that she doesn't immediately retreat from his doorstep. She wonders who is with and if it is that girl with the red hair and glasses that he used to travel around with.

The thought makes her upset, more upset than she should be. She turns on her heel and retreats down the stairs that led up to his apartment. She crosses her arms in the cold, her hot breath causing her to look like a dragon in the night. She's still blushing and her heart is beating very quickly.

She knows Sasuke and her are not together, but she had hoped that now that he was back with Team 7 things would get better between them. She had hoped. But still, how could she expect him to wait this long for her? Maybe she should've have made a move sooner, but she was so scared of pushing him further away from her.

You're really annoying.

He's a twenty-two-year-old man and he has needs. She wonders how many women he's been with, and she begins to feel a little numb. She suddenly feels like she's lost a race she didn't know she was in. But there are no tears— no, not this time. She is stronger and she is grown.

"You aren't with him, Sakura..." she scolds herself on her way back home, rubbing her gloved hands together in an attempt to get a little warmer. Inside she's on fire.

She realizes that she's never dated anyone, let alone let anyone touch her. Maybe it's finally time I let him go and try to meet someone else, she thinks to herself. Maybe I should take Daichi up on his offer for lunch.

She walks herself home in silence under the stars, and is proud of herself. Her eyes did not even get watery- she realizes it would have been stupid to cry when she was not losing something she had in the first place.

Still, she wonders who is in his bed tonight.

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It feels so good to relieve his tension that he almost feels tears in his eyes. He's close, so close. He can almost feel her, smell her, even taste her chakra in the air around him. He's absolutely addicted to her chakra signature and he swears he can still feel it around him.

"Sakura... Fuck, I'm gonna come..!" Sasuke hisses, his cock hard and throbbing. White beads of pre-cum gathered at the tip of his cock and his teeth were clenched so hard they were almost grinding.

He finally explodes, his cum spurting in gushes through the air, all over his hand, on his boxers and on his bed. His eyes are shining in the night, blood red and deep purple. His heart hammers hard in his ribcage and he takes several breaths before he can form a rational thought. And there is only one that comes to mind.

He wonders how many more times he can do this before his hand no longer suffices.