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This was wrong. This was so wrong.
Ever since she could remember, ever since she was a child, Sakura had been in love with Sasuke. Sasuke, who was cool and brilliant and collected, the boy every girl in the academy had a thing for. She wasn’t subtle about it either, and never once were there any doubts about her crush.
Her love had grown as she did too, even as she began to know the real Sasuke, who was not as mysterious as she thought and was, in fact, a giant loser under all the revenge (and being super hot) stuff. She never, through all her disappointment, stopped loving him, so why, why is she feeling this way?
She’s liked Sasuke for years. She likes Sasuke right now. She likes a boy. A man.
But when Ino looks at her like that, begging her to take a break and come to bed, her heart thumps the same way it did with him.
Sakura isn’t a lonely, foolish child anymore. She knows what this is. It’s useless to try and deny it.
“Sakura, are you even listening?!”
There she was, dressed in a simple tank top and white jeans, because she couldn’t be seen as anything but perfect, even if it was midnight in a hospital. The tiredness on her face was hard to hide, even for someone with her level of composure, and there were loose strands falling everywhere on her face. If she looked like that, Sakura didn’t even want to imagine how debauched her own face looked.
“Don’t speak so loud, pig-face, I can hear my brain rattling inside my head.” She covers her forehead and frowns, massaging her temples.
“I. don’t. care. Go home right now! Do you know what time it is?!”
Not this again. Since Tsunade promoted her to head of the hospital, her workload doubled in amount. Everything is her responsibility, between the hospital itself and whatever crisis comes up that Naruto needs her help with. It’s like the world rests entirely on her shoulders. Going home when the moon is high is practically routine. But, if Sakura fails, or misses a single detail, someone’s life is at stake. And she is not the kind of person who can accept failure. “I know, Ino. But I can’t just leave, do you have any idea the amount of work I still have to do?! It’s not… I can’t go home yet.”
Ino frowns even harder and strides towards the desk. Her pretty hand latches onto Sakura’s forearm and pulls with all her might, but Sakura is stronger, and remains still like a rock. Hopefully, her burning red face isn’t too noticeable…
“Ugh! Do you have to do this everytime?!” Ino groans, pulling harder. Still, she fails. Again. Like all the other times she was reminded there’s a reason Sakura is the strongest shinobi, even while exhausted.
“Doing the same thing over and over isn’t going to work, you idiot! Let go of me.”
With a heavy sigh, her arm is finally released, and Ink pushes her hips out like she does everytime she takes a stand on something (no matter how useless it is). “You’re so stubborn! You aaalways have to make everything so fucking difficult! But okay, this is how you want it, hm? Fine.”
Oh, good. She’s throwing a fit again. Whatever, Sakura has too much to worry about anyway.
Ino’s too-loud footsteps echo away, and she doesn’t bother enough to check whether or not she closed the door. She never does anyway. As much as it pains her, Sakura pushes down the annoying voice in her head demanding she get up and fix that, because there’s a two month waitlist on patients in need of a heart transplant, and there’s no time to waste in figuring out a solution for it.
Her body is achy everywhere, muscles more sore than when she used to practice punches hundreds of times a day as a teenager, and, truthfully, there’s nothing she wants more than to follow Ino, go home, and take a nice, hot shower.
Unfortunately, work awaits.
Just when she’s about to turn the page and review another patient case, her office lights turn off. Oh, gods, did the hospital power outage shut off? No, no no! This is the last thing she needs!
But wait, the hallway lights are still on. So why is…
“Ino, get back here, you pig-faced little–!” She’s out the door in a second, headed for the basement where the light fuses are, but the moment she steps out the room, the door closes shut and all she hears is the turn of a key. A key that was (supposedly) safely attached to Sakura’s belt.
Of course she’s there, holding the key to her office in between her long, manicured fingers.
“Did you just… ugh, give me that!”
Sakura launches herself towards Ino, more than ready to jump her if need be, but Ino pulls away, and right as she’s looking in Sakura’s eyes, she shoves the key into her shirt.
“No! It’s almost one in the morning. I will open the office back up after you’ve gotten some sleep.”
“If you think I’m ashamed enough to not take that out of your clothes right now, you don’t know me. This isn't a joke.”
Ino smiles, and pushes Sakura’s things (that were in a locked cabinet…) into her chest. “Please, you’re too much of a pussy to try that. Don’t make me laugh.” She grabs Sakura’s wrist and starts dragging her through the hallways, “Now, come on.”
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Spring nights in Kohona are always so wonderful.
The town looks deserted, with nearly no lights turned on inside people’s humble homes. A soft gush of wind brings a bit of life back into Sakura’s sleep deprived eyes, and she looks up at the moon, at the faint clouds that surround it, and the bright light it casts upon the Hokage monument.
Sakura can’t remember the last time she walked the streets without rushing somewhere.
Suddenly, there are no thoughts in her head, no worries of war or death or responsibilities. Only air. Breathe in, breathe out. If Ino wasn’t clutching her hand, guiding her back home, she’d likely walk mindlessly until collapse.
A subtle shiver passes through her spine when another, stronger gush of wind shakes the trees. Spring nights aren’t freezing, some are even a bit warm, but they are still nights, and she’s grown accustomed to the stuffiness of her office.
Lost in her own mind, she doesn’t notice when Ino’s steps trail down into a stop, and bumps into her.
“What the hell? This isn’t my house, Ino.”
“No shit.” Metal clinks as she pulls out an overly decorated keychain and slides it into the lock, “You’re staying with me. I don’t want you sneaking out before dawn to go back to work, you freak.”
Sakura freezes. A sleepover? With Ino? It wouldn’t be the first time, they had several when they were kids, and a few during their teenage years, but… they’re 25 years old now. Isn’t that odd? When she thinks about it, no, not really. Ino probably has done similar things with other friends. Sakura had some sleepovers with Hinata and Tenten awhile ago, when her whole life wasn’t filled with work, work, work. The difference is she’s not in love with either of them.
Maybe, most likely, they would stay in separate rooms. Sakura hopes they will. She doesn’t think she could handle being in the same bed as Ino, heart pounding in her ears, feeling like a creep for resisting the urge to reach out, knowing Ino would see it as a simple sleepover with her best friend. Isn’t she taking advantage of Ino’s unawareness?
Oh, she’s pathetic.
While they go up to the second floor of Ino’s home, their hands remain clutched to eachother, though she knows this building like the back of her hand. The way her heart races fills her with disgust.
“Now,” Ino says, standing in her room, “go have a shower. You stink. I’ll leave you some clothes on top of the bed.” And, with that, she shoves Sakura into the bathroom. All she hears is a ‘towels are under the sink!’ before the door closes shut. If her brain wasn’t so fried from the 28 hour shift, she’d come up with something snarky to say back, but alas.
Ino’s bathroom is still the same, even after so long: full of products, way too many hairbrushes, and a bit messy but beautiful. Just like her.
And god, it smells like her too. The collective scent of the huge shelf filled with perfumes is so sickeningly sweet it makes her gag, but there’s one, with barely a drop left, that she recognizes as Ino’s favourite one. She wears it all the time, ever since they were old enough to wear perfume. It’s subtle, floral and not too sweet, perfectly enough to make a person want to chase after it. Cherry-blossom scented.
The rational part of her brain is telling her it’s a coincidence. Ino’s favorite flower (and scent) happens to be her name! There’s nothing weird about that.
The other part holds onto that sliver of ignorant hope.
Before she can do something she’ll regret, like spraying it on her own skin like a creep, she sheds her clothes, flinching as the sweat coated fabric clings onto her, and hops into the shower.
The water takes very little to warm up, and it feels heavenly raining down on her. Sakura can feel the sweat and grime of the day wash out with each scrub of her fingers, and when she comes out, some 20-ish minutes later, she feels like herself again.
Steam rolls out the bathroom once she lets herself back into the bedroom, clutching the small towel wrapped around her body that covers just enough. She almost drops it, though, when she sees Ino still in the room, already in her own pajamas, sitting on the bed.
“What the– get out! When you said you’d leave the clothes on the bed I thought that implied you wouldn’t be on top of it as well!”
Ino rolls her eyes, “Are you kicking me out of my own room, ugly? I’ll kick you out of the house. Besides, we’ve seen eachother naked a bunch of times. I don’t see the problem.”
“You don’t–” Sakura flushes, cheeks flaring up at being so exposed, “You don’t see the problem? That– that was when we were kids! It’s different now…”
“Is it? Oh my god, you’re such a baby. Fine, whatever. Don’t cry about it, I’ll turn around.”
It’s still embarrassing, but Sakura supposes that’s as much mercy as she’s gonna get. With her tail between her legs, she picks up the clothes and backs herself up into the corner of the room, like that’d shield her dignity somehow. Truthfully, Ino is right. They did change clothes in front of each other all the time growing up, so why is it different now? It’s not like Ino is the one getting naked, and she’d never see Sakura’s body that way, so what’s the harm?
Logically, it makes no sense, it’s merely a body, everyone has one, but imagining Ino knowing what she looks like at her most vulnerable, being one of the few people to ever see her that way… it makes butterflies fly around in her stomach, except the pleasantly tingle sensation of their wings is soon ruthlessly crushed by the weight of her own shame.
How dare she think of Ino’s innocent, caring notion of their friendship that way? Sakura’s the pervert here, thinking those sorts about her best friend, in her own bedroom.
With a deep breath and a quick, shy look over her shoulder, she lets the towel fall to the floor, and starts getting dressed. The pajama is cute: red and modest, though it’s a complete mismatch of Ino’s entire closet. She’d never wear something like this, so why does she have it? Is it for Sakura? No, that’s silly.
The underwear falls loose on her hips, because of course it does (damn Ino’s hourglass proportions!), so she settles for using the pajama shorts alone. Everything else fits fine. Almost perfect.
“You can look.”
“Finally. Come on, get in here. I’m so tired.”
The world is really against her today. Nothing can go her way.
“Shouldn’t I stay in the guest room?”
Ino is already halfway inside the obnoxiously purple sheets that cover her equally obnoxiously purple bed when she says that, and merely rolls her eyes, “Sakura, you are seriously pissing me off. What’s up with you?! You’re being stupid.” She covers herself completely, taking up the right side of the bed, “Turn off the lights before you get here.”
Heart pounding, Sakura relents, and the room quickly grows dark with a ‘click!’. Her eyes are far too trained to become blind with little light, so she can still see Ino’s face smushed against the pillow as she opens up a space in bed for her. A slap against the sheets is all it takes for her to obey, crawling on top of the mattress.
Any self-deprecating thoughts don’t have the time to overcloud her judgment of this whole…situation. The moment her body lays down against the deliciously soft silk, her mind shuts off, and it doesn’t take her long to pass out.
If Ino covers her with the blanket, she doesn’t notice.
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.
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Her body flinches, mind jolting as she’s awakened from her sleep, feeling warm all over. The faint traces of fear from a forgotten nightmare make her heart pound, cold shivers run down her spine as she focuses on the ceiling above her and tries to calm down: an inhale, breathe in, hold and wait, breathe out.
There’s nothing left from the nightmare except the blurry memory of blood, so she puts it on the back of her mind, where it always is.
It must be around twilight, because the moon is still high up and everything is dark. She mustn’t have been out for more than a couple of hours, her body is still craving sleep like nothing else. Her eyelids feel heavy.
And yet, no matter how many breathing exercises she does taught by Tsunade, her body doesn’t seem to cool down. There’s a strange, hot weight on top of her, and when she looks down, she almost wishes she was still trapped in that nightmare, because Ino’s laying right on her chest, arm thrown over her stomach and a leg perched up against her hip.
Oh my god, oh my godohmygod.
“Uhn-” She squeaks, feeling like the room is burning her alive.
It feels so good, too good. Her heart’s thumping out of her chest! Ino’s skin is so soft, so milky white beneath the moonlight. A single tan line rests on the upper side of her calf from the inch of skin her pants don’t cover during missions. Years of training have paid off into lean, strong muscle, though a softness still remains mostly– her speciality isn’t brute strength, like Sakura’s is.
In fact, Ino’s soft all over. She’s all curves, and Sakura tries to stop her eyes from following the dip of her back as she arches into her body. She fails and, instead, keeps trailing the movement of Ino’s hips, the raise of her pajama shorts that might as well not even be there, the wrinkles of her top clinging onto her waist.
Why Ino chose to use such a low-cut top for sleeping, she’ll never know (especially since it seems a bit uncomfortable), but Sakura will curse her eternally for it. It’s a cute shirt, she’ll admit– rich purple with a darker shade for the surrounding lace– and that’s completely irrelevant when Ino’s chest is practically jumping out of it. It could be bright yellow for all she knows.
The lace strap is falling off one of her shoulders, loosened from the position, pulling the shirt further down her body. One more tug and it would expose her entirely, and if Sakura looks a little lower, there’s the tiniest bit of pink peeking out of it–
That’s enough! She needs to stop. It’s sin in its purest form… but Sakura has to resist.
You’re being a pervert, the sane part of her speaks, and she tries and tries again to listen, to obey, but Ino looks so pretty draped in (what’s practically) lingerie that she can’t help it! She almost considers correcting the strap, but further contact with Ino would only make her situation worse, and she is not about to feel like an even sicker freak.
After deep, deep effort, she pulls her eyes away from the view.
Blonde strands of hair that are usually so perfect cover both her and Ino herself, twisted with knots, ridiculously framing Ino’s face with horrible bed-hair. Her cheek is smushed against Sakura’s chest, marked with the folds of the fabric, and she’s even drooling a little (gross!), face swollen with sleep.
Still, she looks gorgeous, so beautiful she can’t focus on anything else. Her lips are forming the slightest pout, tinted with a bit of natural red. and Sakura can only think of how soft they must be to kiss.
She clutches her fists hard enough to leave dents in her palm. She doesn’t deserve this.
If Sakura moves away very, very slowly, without alerting her, Ino won’t even know this happened. Genius! Sure, they both have the reflexes of highly trained soldiers, but Sakura is skilled enough. Hopefully.
Ino probably wouldn’t care either way, but at least it’d save Sakura an explanation of why she’s so against cuddling. It’s for the best.
As much as she can, Sakura moves her way to the left, which is about two inches before bumping shoulders with the corner of the nightstand, because, apparently, Ino gravitates as much as possible to the left side of the bed in her sleep.
She’s considering falling off the bed on purpose when Ino stirs, pulling her even closer and effectively ruining her escape progress.
No. Don’t wake up!! I’m still freaking out!
Her prayers, once more, are not heard.
“Mmhm, Sakura…?”
Ino raises her head slightly, just enough to look at her as she calls out her name, hazy blue eyes dripping with concern.
“Stop… don’t go…” She whispers, barely awake, slurring her words with sleepiness.
It sounds so needy, like she’s seconds away from begging with tears. Her hands weakly clutch the stiff shoulders under her, like that’d keep Sakura in place somehow.
Sakura nearly breaks. Her head is pounding. This is wrong, Ino is her friend, she can’t–
Ino raises herself once more to bury her head in Sakura’s neck, wrapping her leg tighter around her waist. “Go back to sleep, loser…”
And like it’s routine, she kisses Sakura on the corner of her lips before closing her eyes back shut. It takes a couple of seconds, at most, for her breathing to even out once more.
Whatever restraint was left shatters into pieces. Every muscle in her body shakes as she covers them back in the blankets the best she can, and oh-so-hesitantly rests her hand on Ino’s thigh. That small, meaningless contact makes her melt.
When Sakura passes out from exhaustion half an hour later, her face is still red.
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Morning finally comes, letting blinding rays of sunshine waltz in through the curtains of Ino’s room and a warmness be cast onto Sakura’s face. It’s a wonderful way to wake up, one she rarely enjoys, because the sun is only this intense past 9am… what time is it?
“Ino..?” The bed beside her is empty, though she assumes not for long, since her arm still feels numb from having Ino on top of it the entire night and the mattress is still warm.
A wonderful smell of pancakes wafts up to the room, and Sakura follows it like a starving cartoon character levitating towards a pie. She finds Ino in the kitchen nursing a frying pan, still in her pajamas but wearing a frilly, purple apron around her waist.
“Heyy, sleepyhead!” She chirps, serving two plates stacked with steaming hot pancakes, strawberries and honey, on top of the table. There’s fresh coffee already poured inside two cups, one pale with milk and sugar and the other not.
Sakura’s stomach rumbles. How long has it been since her last real meal?
“What’s all this?” She sits herself on one of the chairs, already drooling with the food in front of her.
“Breakfast. I’m a wonderful cook, have I ever told you that? Well, whatever, because you’re going to try it out for yourself. Dig in!”
She doesn’t need to say it twice.
Sakura wastes no time in cutting up the pancakes and shoving a piece into her mouth. It tastes like heaven on her tongue. Buttery, warm, comforting. She eats the rest of the pancakes so quickly it almost chokes her, but she gulps down some throat-burning coffee and moves on with her breakfast.
By the time she’s done, there’s barely a crumb left. Ino has a smug smile on her face.
“Since when do you know how to cook?”
“I live alone! A girl’s got to eat good, y’know? And I’m not about to order take-out every night.” She huffs, “So, it was good, right?”
‘She already knows the answer to that!’, Sakura thinks, frowning.
“Yes, okay? It was super good. Thank you.”
Ino smiles proudly, and moves on with her own breakfast.
“By the way, what time is it?” Sakura asks, suddenly stressed because she knows she’s late.
“11AM.”
“Eleven–” She chokes, “Eleven AM?! Ino, why didn’t you wake me up?! I was supposed to be at the hospital 5 hours ago!”
“You were sleeping so soundly I couldn’t! Besides, I didn’t wake up that much earlier than you…”
“I need to go– where are my clothes?!”
“In the washer! They were filthy, Sakura.” Awe, that’s so sweet, but also, fuck! “Just stay a little longer, you’re already late anyway–”
“I have a meeting at noon, Ino!” Sakura’s already running around the house, ignoring Ino whatever Ino’s muffled words are trying to say, searching for her lab coat to at least cover her up. There must be a change of clothes and a spare toothbrush in her office.
She closes every button to disguise her lack of formal attire, puts on her shoes and practically runs out the door.
“Sakura, wait!”
Her wrist is pulled back with a persistent grip and a key is put in her hand. Her office key, where all her things are, which she would’ve been locked out of.
Amidst Sakura’s panic, Ino’s hold doesn’t falter nor rushes, and she’s about to forcefully pull her hand away when Ino’s hand raises her chin. Their faces are so close she can’t breathe.
“Have a nice day.” Ino says fondly, and slowly kisses her cheek.
A good three seconds of pure silence pass before Sakura reacts again. Then, in a second, she’s on the far end of the street without a single goodbye, face on fire as she bolts towards the hospital.
Ino stands there stupidly with the door still open, hurt written all over her face. She watches Sakura run away until she’s no more than a pink dot. Suddenly, she stops, and before either of them can register what’s happening, Sakura races down the street as fast again as she can and nearly sends them both flying into the ground as grabs Ino’s face between her hands and presses a deep, clumsy kiss to her lips.
The small echo of their lips parting hasn’t faded before Sakura disappears again, already halfway to the hospital.
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♡