12

There was nothing.

And the nothing was warm.

The nothing was safe.

The nothing was soft.

The nothing was pleasing in its emptiness and lack of expectations; comforting in its fathomless, silent depths and-

Something was touching my face.

Why was something touching my face?

My eyes snapped open, a familiar ceiling there to greet me when I did; smooth, artfully lacquered wood fit for a princess. Purplish trim. Also purplish curtains at the corners of my vision and lovely platinum-blonde hair.

It was then, at that very moment, before I could fully gain my bearings and from ambush, an even more familiar finger flicked me in the forehead. "Damn it, Ino!"

I missed the nothing already.

"Good morning to you too, Sakura. How was your nap? Good?" Ino stretched while I scowled. Joints popped and weight shifted as she reached over my head with both arms, looking up from between my breasts as she ground against me. "It looked like you were enjoying it."

Immensely.

"...It wasn't terrible."

But, as ever, admit nothing.

"It better not have been. Not after what I did to you. Or is it what you did to me? Which is it?" Legs kicking lightly and lifting the sheets we were wrapped in, Ino attacked me yet again with a tap to the nose and a grin. "Little miss one-and-done."

Oh.

Oh dear.

Ino's grin widened as heat filled my face.

I had done that, hadn't I? One and done.

And I'd even fallen asleep after.

What was next? Smoking in bed? An overly proud strut to mark my territory? A long bathroom break and a strongly-worded suggestion that Ino better get me a sandwich?

…This was obvious hyperbole.

But the stereotype.

It ate at me, like an acid.

"I've finally done it. I've finally found it." She continued to tap my nose, following me on my weak retreat deeper into the pillow. "The one thing you aren't good at."

"Untrue," I defended myself, voice cracking as the smug curl at either side of Ino's smile grew and she continued to tap. "There are other things."

"Genjutsu and baking are old news." Ino dismissed my case before it could begin with a smug leer... She had me in a corner and she knew it. Also, ow. I'd just woken up. And the blows just kept coming. This wasn't fair. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

What.

"What do I have to say for myself?" I echoed incredulously as the blonde gave me a stern nod. "I didn't know that this was something that I had to explain."

I was a girl, damn it! Not a freshly pubescent high school boy at the prom that had gotten himself his first handful of heavily clothed ass! That had been forever ago!

…If it had happened at all. Which it might not have.

My imagination was very good.

I was sane.

And I hadn't been prepared for this line of questioning in any way, shape, or form.

This wasn't fair.

"Now, look. Sakura." Ino stopped tapping my nose and moved onto my collarbone, switching to twisting that digit in a way that I was sure she thought was cute. And, to be fair, it was. "When you promised to make sure I was satisfied before you left-"

"Damn it," I muttered.

"-Certain expectations were made." She laughed. "You really worried me when you got all quiet earlier, you know?" Then she pressed down slightly on the next twirl of the finger. "I thought I had something to worry about."

So had I.

"It didn't go according to plan," I muttered again.

"Is that what you call it? Cumming then fainting like I'd hit you with your birthday jutsu?"

What? No. That wasn't the same thing at all. What had happened to me had been due to exhaustion and emotional release. Not nervous system overload.

It was very different. And was that what we were calling it now? The birthday jutsu?

The matter was pondered upon.

I mean… I suppose?

There were worse names for better.

Back to fighting a frantic defensive battle to keep what was left of my fragile dignity then.

"I was expecting to go three fingers deep tonight, Ino." Face still hot, I most definitely did not pout. "Not use this particular jutsu for a purpose it was never-"

"It was for you to take a piss with, right."

Crass.

But not wrong.

"We never talked about it again. And I had other things to do besides tinkering with a jutsu that already did what I'd set out for it to do." I persisted past Ino's helpless chuckling, my tactical considerations, as always, a source of great amusement to her; I did not sputter, not even a little. I did not. "The rules changed."

The first sign that your argument was failing: moving the posts.

Shit.

The end was near.

"The march of war is always forward, Sakura. The rules change all the time. Be the hurricane or be the one taken by the hurricane." Ino bit her lips and continued to squirm on top of me, on the verge of losing it entirely as my pout turned into a mask of horror. "A failure to prepare is the same as preparing to fail...or so I've heard."

The end was here.

And it was devastating.

"Those are my w-words!" This time, I did sputter. I sputtered hard, my voice rising in volume. "I said that! You heard them from me!"

This. This was why ninja didn't share anything. This right here.

It was just an invitation for it to be used against you when least helpful, every time.

"Was that yours? Really? You should have listened to yourself - then." Ino took in a shuddering breath, her chest shaking madly with barely held laughter. "You sound like a very smart woman that knows what she's talking about."

…I didn't know how to respond to that backhanded compliment. Or how to respond to anything without sounding the fool; I was never at my best after just waking up.

There was only one thing left for me to do then. A singular option to salvage this.

"...Alright." I cleared my throat, pushing down my awkward blush with a herculean effort of will. "You've had your fun. Calm down, please. Let me talk." That Ino was still laughing at me didn't help, my blush or her fun, but it was done. "I thought I did rather well."

Brazenly shift the subject to an earlier and much easier to handle point in the conversation, if only to stop the bleeding.

"You do, do you?" Ino, still between my breasts, looked up at me with narrowed yet sparkling eyes. "Why do you think that?"

"Well… First, as we've established." I held up a hand and started counting off, confidence gaining strength now that I was on gradually more stable ground. "That was my first time putting this jutsu to that particular use."

"Uh huh."

"Second, I'm a girl."

"I might have noticed that."

"And not a boy."

"The plot thickens."

"That I was able to get you to orgasm around the same time I did-"

Ino waggled a hand. "About the same."

Wonderful.

"-Was a miracle." I paused to consider my next words. Nodded to myself while Ino did a rolling line of taps on my chest, a miniature drumline. "I did not expect this level of sensitivity."

Not at all. The required nerve endings and infrastructure had been added to the construct, testing for the intended use (with some minor aiming issues before they'd been accounted for) had been successful, and that had been the end of it.

…I might have 'forgotten' to test out the new equipment, is what I was saying. I admitted it.

Having the extremely complicated, impromptu strapon Ino had asked for not be as - limited - as I'd thought it would be had been a shock. It shouldn't have been. But it had.

And we'd leave it at that.

Ino blinked up at me without guile, a leg entwining more tightly with one of mine as she used my right breast as a pillow. "You forgot to take the new equipment out for a test run, didn't you?"

Ffff-

"Fffff- Yes. 'Forgot'." I took my time breathing out through my nose for this one while Ino gave my head a stroke. "So, I think, without any experience of any sort, I did rather well."

"Aww, poor baby. It's okay. I had fun." Ino gave me a pat that I leaned into. "And that just means you'll be better next time, right?"

"I suppose," was my answer as I ran a hand along the curve of her hip, getting the general gist of things. "In time."

And practice.

Lots of practice.

"So modest and humble," she said back with a bright, open smile and another pat that made me close my eyes in contentment… Bliss. "Besides that very important problem though, what's eating you?"

"Hmm? What's eating me?" I sighed as she gave one of my locks a tug. "Not you."

Hah. Got her.

"Hey." She tugged that lock again, harder, and with a whine. "I'm serious."

"So am I." I winced when she put some oomph into the next pull at my hair. "Okay, okay. Damn it, Ino. That hurts."

"And you'll be all better when you open up."

Debatable.

"This is extortion." I pointed out as the pull on my hair became an insistent one, moving my skull to the side. "And an attempt at intimidation."

"Does that mean you feel like talking now?"

In a way.

I cleared my throat. "Haruno Sakura. Genin. Roll Number 3389."

I could do that for weeks if I had to.

"Sakura."

"Haruno-" The next tug was more of a yank, forcing me part of the way up into a sit, with her shuffling lower on my body. "Ow. Ow. Ow, ow, ow. Okay, alright, I was just kidding, fuck."

Ow.

"I didn't want to bring it up at the store, but you aren't yourself today. You're more clingy than normal. Touchy." Ino's voice as she spoke those words, still cheery, sent a shiver down my spine. "You're saying the right words and doing the right things when you're not trying to distract me, but you're not just worried about tomorrow, are you?"

I couldn't help the defensive rising of my shoulders. Or the falling of my mouth into a frown as Ino searched my features unblinkingly.

Ino had figured it out.

She continued to stare, her eyes shot through with lines of red as they dried in real-time.

I forced my face back into a semblance of normalcy, unable to look back without my heart falling into my feet.

"Oh my god." Ino mouthed the words more than she vocalized them. "You're scared."

…You gave some things up when you slept with a Yamanaka.

"Was I really that obvious?" I asked weakly as Ino's rough grip on my hair softened. "I thought I'd hid it better than that."

"You visited me at the shop, in the middle of the day, and clung to me like I was a lifeline until we left, Sakura." Ino worried at her lower lip with her teeth, strands of my hair curling loosely around her wrist. "Disguise was never your best class...and I'm your best friend, you idiot. Of course I noticed."

I had no rebuttal. For any of that. None. I might as well have been wearing a sign around my neck when she said it like that.

"...That wasn't my best moment," I said while rubbing my cheek. "Parents aren't home again."

"And cuddling your toys wasn't cutting it today," Ino finished for me, giving me a quick squeeze. "I get it."

I doubted that.

"Do you though?"

"I don't get why you're scared. You haven't told me," Ino acknowledged with a sharp look that said she expected an explanation at some point, "but I get that you are. And that you needed to be with someone before you had to leave."

Looking down at her and her earnest expression, I found myself - conflicted. Stuck between extremes: Necessity and much wanted catharsis. Secrecy and openness.

I couldn't tell her why tomorrow terrified me. But I wanted to. The story of my life, now at the forefront.

Tomorrow was the end of our idyllic days. The true end. Tomorrow was the beginning of escalation after unreasonable escalation, world-changing events and the constant presence of intensely disturbed individuals that often indulged in the fine art of continent reshaping.

But I couldn't. I'd sound insane. I had no proof, no way to give my words tangible weight and backing so that they could be taken seriously. I'd go from 'healthily' cautious to drummed out of the service with all of the speed a stamp hitting my file could muster.

That was the best case scenario.

The worst case was that I just - disappeared one day.

…I thought about that a lot. Had before. Would keep doing it.

I was thinking about it now.

Compromise. That was the answer. Something that would satisfy Ino. Something true, but not the full story.

"The client is lying," I ground out reluctantly. "Or he isn't telling us the entire story, like I said back at the shop. If this mission isn't a B-rank or worse…"

"Evidence?" Ino asked, not denying I might have a point outright.

"He hired us to walk him back home. A C-rank. Protection clauses added."

"And?" the blonde prodded.

"He walked straight here from his home."

Ino blinked several times as the alarms began to ring. "Who's the client?"

"An old drunk of a bridge builder."

"How drunk?"

"Like a fish, I hear."

Ino narrowed her eyes at me. "Hear?"

"Haven't met him yet," I said with a shrug; Ino rearranged herself higher up on my chest. "Working with descriptions." And ancient memories. "Sixty years old, give or take a year. Gray hair. Glasses. Perpetually drunk. Only possessions are a bottle of sake, his clothing, and a sleeping bag. Money was used for hiring my team."

"Destination?"

"Land of Waves."

Ino chewed on a thumbnail. "Two-day walk at civilian speeds… He could have left his supplies at an inn."

"He could have," I agreed. "But why didn't he drop his sleeping bag before meeting the Hokage?"

Ino grimaced. "Point. And your mission is tomorrow… Where is he sleeping then?"

"I suspect we have ourselves a vagrant."

"Right, sleeping bag. And it's warm outside. Not a bad time for it if he finds a decent tree to set up under. Him being a paying customer gives him that much leeway." Ino nodded, brow's furrowed. "You think he bought the cheapest team he could afford to deal with a problem he's expecting along the road? Or close enough?"

"Essentially."

Ino hummed and mulled that over. Nodded again, with some reluctance. "It does sound suspicious… Of course, he could have just hired you guys on impulse. It happens." Ino wagged a finger under my nose. "He is an old drunk, right? People at his age can get kind of funny."

"And he was drunk."

"Noted. For the fourth time." She snickered, then coughed into her hand. "Alright. I'll give you this one, Sakura. He's weird. I'd have preferred first-hand knowledge but, with the information you've given me, he's probably hiding something mission-related. What you said makes sense."

I sniffed, relaxing slightly. "Thank you."

Done.

That was as good as either of us was going to get for a long, long time. And we were just going to have to be content with that.

"But I will say that there is, so far, no reason to think this is going to be an absolute shit show. But I already know that changing your mind about that is a lost cause." Ino sat up, the sheets falling down around her waist and - oh, dear. "So how about I help you keep your mind off of things for a little longer instead?"

I stared.

She shook her chest at me and waggled her brows.

"...Okay."

The waking world had its good points too.