Disclaimer: I don't own them. I just try to make them even gayer than Kishimoto does. It's quite a challenge at times.
Summary: Sasuke suspects he's being poisoned. Sakura suspects he just needs a little tongue time with Naruto. Naruto/Sasuke or Sasuke/Naruto, whichever.
Author's Note: Assume Sasuke's come back, and things are hunky-dory in Konoha-town once more.
Diagnosis: Clueless
by Kantayra
Sakura's eyes widened in alarm when she stepped into the exam room to see her next patient. Sullen eyes glared back at her like nothing whatsoever was unusual. Sakura coughed once to restore her professional demeanor and flipped to a new page of her clipboard.
"What's bothering you today, Sasuke-kun?" she asked politely. She bit her tongue to add that it would have to be serious for Sasuke to even think of setting foot in the hospital.
Sasuke's brows furrowed, and he attempted to slouch forward into his usual surly pose, but the exam table made it awkward. He settled for scowling down at the table, and then scowling back up at Sakura. "I'm being poisoned."
At that statement, all Sakura's errant fantasies about stripping Sasuke down for a very thorough examination popped like a bubble. "What?" Sakura's jaw dropped. "You… How do you…?"
"It started ever since I returned to Konoha," Sasuke informed her, like the idea that someone was poisoning him didn't bother him at all. "I experience regular bouts of fever, stomach cramps, and occasionally even an arrhythmia."
Sakura half-sat, half-fell into the doctor's chair. "And you're just coming in now?" she exclaimed after she'd processed all that. "You've been back for four months already!"
"The symptoms have been building over time, presumably as the poison builds up in my system. It hadn't reached critical levels until recently."
"We need to find out what kind of poison it is." Sakura bit her lip. She didn't bother to ask who could be poisoning him; after his stint as a missing ninja, plenty of people in Konoha still held grudges. "Do you notice the symptoms after eating?"
"Sometimes." Sasuke grunted. "Especially when I eat ramen. It's happened a couple of times at the Korean barbeque, too."
"What about when you prepare your own food?"
"Never. It doesn't just happen when I'm eating, though."
"When else?" Sakura began scribbling notes on her page, brainstorming all the poisons she knew of that could account for Sasuke's symptoms.
"It gets really bad when I'm training sometimes. And other times when I'm just around the village and haven't eaten anything recently."
Sakura frowned at this. "If it was ingested, there should be a pattern of strong symptoms immediately after eating. Would you say that's the case?"
"Er, not really." Sasuke glared down at a speck on the carpet. "Usually, if I feel sick after eating, I felt sick before, too."
Sakura pondered this for a long moment. "I suppose it could be some sort of jutsu, but those are difficult to detect unless you're actively having a spell. Do you feel any symptoms right now?"
Sasuke shrugged unhelpfully.
"I'll want to run some tests anyway, just to eliminate some other possibilities." Sakura circled a couple of the ideas on her clipboard before adding question marks before each. She dug around in one of the drawers and pulled out a chakra band designed to measure vital signs. "Put this on, please."
Sasuke did so grudgingly, and Sakura activated the screen in the office designed to display the information coming from the band. The strong, regular beep of Sasuke's heart filled the room. Sakura fought her best not to create any fangirl metaphors about that.
"You look fine now. I'm going to need a blood sample to see—"
At that point, Sakura's instructions were interrupted by a loud bang, the door flying open, and orange chaos erupting into the room. "Sakura-chan, Sakura-chan, help him!" Naruto grabbed Sakura by the shoulders and started shaking her violently. "Is Sasuke-bastard going to be okay?"
"Idiot." Sasuke rolled his eyes. "I told you to wait in the lobby."
"You were taking a really long time, so I thought you might be dying." Naruto squinted at where Sasuke sat, looking extremely bored, on the exam table. "You're not dying, are you? Sakura-chan, is he dying?" Naruto started shaking her again.
"Knock it off!" Sakura yelled, bonking Naruto over the head with her clipboard. "He's not dying. We just need to—" Sakura froze when she heard the beeping in the background. She hadn't been able to hear it before with all the racket that accompanied Naruto wherever he went, but now she could tell that Sasuke's heart-rate had increased rapidly.
"It's happening now," Sasuke confirmed her worried look.
Sakura went over him quickly to check his temperature. He did look a bit flushed, but his forehead felt okay and…
It was around this time that Sakura developed a theory. The thought niggled at the back of her mind and filled her with the sudden urge to punch something.
"Naruto?" she asked, voice cracking on the urge not to scream. "Will you step outside for a moment?"
Naruto blinked at her, puzzled. "Huh?"
Sakura gave him a shove out the door and slammed it closed. She turned back to Sasuke and crossed her arms over her chest.
His brow furrowed for a second, and then his eyes widened and darted quickly in the direction of the monitor screen. His heartbeat had already slowed down to its original rate.
"Observe," Sakura said, trying not to roll her eyes too hard.
She opened the door to where Naruto was just about to bang on it again. Sasuke's heartbeat sped up.
She slammed the door in Naruto's face. Sasuke's heartbeat slowed down.
Open, to where Naruto was about to try to rush through the door: increased heartbeat.
Closed, so that Naruto smacked right into it: slow heartbeat.
"Understand?"
"Someone's poisoning me…through Naruto?" Sasuke asked in disbelief.
Sakura fought the urge to smack him right on his thick skull. "Congratulations," she wrote her diagnosis on her clipboard, "you're in love."
"What?" Sasuke sputtered, looking as horrified as she'd ever seen him.
"You're in love," she repeated with a disappointed sigh. She'd known, of course, that she never really had had a chance, but it had been fun to pretend for a while.
Sasuke glowered at her. "I am not in love," he insisted. "It's some kind of poison."
"Because you get sweaty, your stomach starts twisting, and your heartbeat speeds up?" Sakura rolled her eyes. "When you're eating ramen…with Naruto. Training…with Naruto. And just hanging around town… Guess what? Also with Naruto."
Sasuke crossed his arms over his chest. "I could never be in love, and especially not with that moron."
Sakura smiled at him with false sweetness. "Let's try a little experiment, shall we?" She flung the door wide open once again.
Naruto had been charging it, of course. He couldn't stop in time, and Sakura stuck out her ankle. Naruto tripped over it and went careening forward into Sasuke's lap. Instinctively, Sasuke reached out to catch Naruto and suddenly found himself nose-to-nose with the very idiot he denied so very hard that he was in love with.
The heart monitor started beeping wildly.
"Uh… Sorry about that, bastard," Naruto said sheepishly.
Sasuke's eyes widened as he realized the accuracy of Sakura's diagnosis.
"You'll both be happy to know that, while Sasuke-kun's condition can't be cured, it can be treated," Sakura continued smugly. "I recommend prolonged oral contact with specific focus on inserting the lingual muscle into the oral cavity. Repeat regularly and rigorously. The underlying condition will remain, but its more unpleasant symptoms will ease over time." She sighed wearily at where Sasuke was looking at Naruto's face, vaguely cross-eyed. "And, for the love of god, come see me before you try to take things any further than that. I dread to think what you two might think would be appropriate lubricant or contraceptives…"
Naruto blinked in confusion. "Huh? What? What's she talking about, Sasuke-bastard?"
Sasuke's heartbeat was spiking on the monitor. "I think I'd better take my medicine right now…" His voice sounded impossibly husky.
Sakura saved the sound in her memory for her shower tonight. Just because her hopelessly-gorgeous teammate was gay for her other teammate, didn't mean that she had to ignore perfectly serviceable masturbation material.
"Good plan," she agreed. "Take your time."
A yelp followed as Sasuke attacked Naruto's lips. The yelp quickly turned into a moan, though. Quite a lot of lingual muscles seemed to be involved on both sides. Also: grinding. Sakura added that image to her memory, too, just for good measure.
Then, she shut the exam room door closed behind them and made sure to set the sign to 'Do not disturb: Exam in progress.' After all, she had just stumbled upon what could be the greatest medical breakthrough of her generation. True, she'd need to gather more data, but Sasuke and Naruto's case provided her with almost everything she needed.
Hastily, she scribbled an extra note on the bottom of her clipboard: Hypothesis: All boys are emotionally retarded idiots.
It was a diagnosis none could deny, she thought proudly.
Just a random bit of fun. Thanks so all who read, and reviews always make me squee like a dork. :P