A/N:
Okay, I really don't know quite what happened with this one. It was written all in one go, and I'm not sure I like it; I think it could've been much better, but its 2:00 in the morning so this is it. In any case it explores some Ino/Naruto ideas id like to look into. :D And No, before you ask, I am not a Sasu/Saku fan, at all. Or a Shika/Tema fan really. (That's why Temari's made out as a bit of a whore here, even though our viewpoint is seeing her as Ino does...sorrys:p) I just like playing with Ino/Naru and this idea seemed to need the other two pairings as well. Whatever goes with the story idea, eh?

And as usual with my writings: This is a drabble. With absolutely no semblance whatsoever of storyline, so don't go expecting an in-depth, mind-gripping plot bunny to jump out at you. This is the realm of spectral and whimsical notions only. Phooey on plot.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Damn.

Rated M for slightly graphic sexual references and some language. You've been warned.

Pairings: Ino/Naruto

Some mentions of Sasu/Saku and Shika/Tema, and hints of one-sided Ino/Shika and Naru/Saku.

Perfect Couple

Can you tell me if I'm perfect, baby?

I don't wanna be perfect for you just yet, baby

Everyone sees them as the matching couple.

Blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Powerful and noisy.

They blend in a way that Sakura and her dark prince can't mesh, they are picture-perfect in a trend that Shikamaru and his sand she-devil can't replicate. People sigh when they watch them go by, bickering loudly and shoving each other into things no matter what the subject, whether it be Naruto's choice of ramen again, or who will be on top in bed next. The passerby titter and giggle at the two of them, and mutter amongst themselves about how 'They look so good together.'

Of course, they're right, but sometimes Ino isn't sure.

She and Naruto are different. She and Naruto are separate. She looks into the idea of the girlfriend and boyfriend, toys with thoughts of partners and lovers and thinks on the notions she used to have of a handsome flawless knight to her problems and the sweeping off her feet and a fairytale life with a white picket fence.

But she knows better then to believe that now. Though really, she wonders if she even really wants those things anymore. She's a Kunoichi, she's a ninja, and she's a tool. She's a woman. Naruto is a man. Sometimes she can't wrap her head around it anymore then that.

Blonde-haired and Blue-eyed. Aren't they so the same?

In theory, and on the surface, they match. But the people don't see how different it all is beneath. Underneath the underneath.

Ino's skin is pale, olive-toned below cream. Her hair is pale, flaxen wheat that was left in the sun to bleach and ripen.

Naruto's skin is sun-browned and dark. His life-altering seal almost blends into his stomach. His hair is bright and vibrant, a thick yellow-gold tangle under her fingers.

Ino knows they are different here, and it keeps her sane.

But their eyes are harder to pin down; they are ever changing.

When they're eating, and Naruto slurps his ramen and discourses loudly about issues even nosy Ino thinks would be best kept silent, like how that bastard didn't deserve her anyway and he'll get sand up his ass and possibly into other questionable parts, her eyes are a light, tight wash of blue that bore cheerfully into his head and her manicured nails dig into his arm and if he bleeds from it, it is so not her problem because she'll be exiting in a huff in three seconds anyway.

When they're sparring, and the sun glances off Naruto's shiny perspiring chest and dust is kicked into the air, her eyes are burning blue circles of focus and energy and his are a laughing bright azure glow on her skin as she moves. He is almost effortless and she is almost grace as they sweat and rebound back and forth and back and forth from each other. When its over, if it doesn't end with sex from the bodily tension they build up, with him catching her and driving her into the ground and not bothering to remove clothes any more then absolutely necessary because, well, that would be cumbersome, Ino will claim she won. Of course then they get a fight about it, and those always end with sex, so either way it really works out in the end…

When their peers talk to them, meet with them, usually in groups of two themselves and Sakura beams disgustingly with Sauske in tow and Shikamaru gives her sidelong looks that she wants to punch off his face before he gets dragged away by his pouf-haired little sand harlot, Ino's eyes are frigid, icy irises in her face and so glacially cool and unconnected it almost gives her away. But Narutos hand is in hers and his eyes are hot, boiling rays through the pink-haired Kunoichis head until even Ino twinges when she looks at him, even though his voice chatters on like he's as dense and oblivious as always. In the end, when the other Jounins walk away and Narutos hand eases from hers, they don't know whether they've given themselves away or not, and whether they spilled the beans to their companions or each other they're not altogether sure of either.

When they lie out on the roof of his apartment, drinking cheap vodka to drown their feelings to manageable margins, the stars beat down on them so close that Ino reaches her hand up and pretends to catch one, and he asks if he can see it. Her eyes are a silvery-soft fragile baby-blue, like she doesn't know anything, and his eyes are a deep and glassy indigo-blue, like he does. She says no he can't, saucily, so of course he wrestles her to the ground on the thin blanket and pries her fist open, and for a second they both stare at her empty fingers as though there should be something there, but they had only just lost it.

That's when Ino looks up and sees Narutos eyes with a million stars in them, and he sees hers with a thousand galaxies in them, and for a little bit, their eyes are the same.

That's when things are confusing.

They practically live together, and they always eat together, and they spend nights wallowing on roofs looking at skies or kissing the souls out of each other, or pounding each other into the sheets until the sweat on their bodies has mixed so much it tastes the same, and she thinks she might die for him, and he reflects that he'd die for her, but she doesn't know how to call this a relationship.

It's been a year and they don't say 'I love you.'

She thinks she might leave him if he spoke the words. But he would never.

It's strange, how it all started when they were heart-sick and love-hungry and a little bit snapped off in places. When she realized the genius didn't see her likewise, and he noticed that his cherry blossom's affections had floated elsewhere. When they had given up and faced facts and both of them had acknowledged to each other over a few bottles of sake that it hurt like hell. That's when it had started. But they don't love each other.

And Ino knew that unlike how they'd originally planned, it isn't just physical; this twisted little something between them.

It may have begun that way, when later that night the sake had emptied and the eyes had roamed, and then he'd been over her and on her and his mouth had been warm and good and his body had been hot and better, because Narutos skin always felt like it was on fire, and her freezing numb fingers and toes always craved it. He'd been rough and hard and fast, and had bent her over like a slut and whispered his dirty, broken words in her ear, and she'd been hurried and needy and begged, and had seen stars at his voice and had loved it.

Later she'd been scandalized and he'd been awkward. They hadn't meant to. For a week Ino lived in a constant state of flux and fusion, rip-roaring heart-break from the genius and hints of selfish, curious anticipation from the jinchuriki.

And then it had happened again. And then again. And again. When they talk on it now, she says it was all his doing, but he laughs and says she just feels embarrassed that she needed him.

First it was physical gratification, the need for a body to caress. They were hot and hard and quick and they spoke different names at their peaks or no names at all, and they turned their faces away from each other in shame.

But then, she found herself staying at his apartment for longer. For dinner, for breakfast. She found herself dragging him groceries shopping for some real food and practicing her jutsu with him. He found himself expecting to see her bundled up in his sheets in the morning, sitting on his windowsill with a yogurt. He found himself going for ramen with her, just because.

And then one day when her head tossed back while he licked right there, because Naruto could go down like it was nobody's business, her pale lips had parted and it had been his name she breathed out soft and gasping. And then she wanted him. His golden hair between her fingers and his tan skin melding with her own and his eyes, hard and bright white-hot blue jewels gluing to her face in fascination as she yells and comes for him. Then it was her name which rasped from his lips along with his strings of profanity and his knee-weakening phrases. He wanted her pale hair sweat-plastered to his skin and her scent of lilies and freesias and roses in his nose.

So now Ino doesn't know what to call it. They can't be lovers, because they don't love. They aren't fuck buddies, like many ninja have, because it's not all physical. The sex is the best she's ever had, yes, she's acknowledged it. To him as well as others, and it never fails to swell his already super-sized ego, but there's not much she can do about that.

Now it's also the way he'll tickle the bottoms of her feet in passing while she's studying mission scrolls. It's the way she teases him mercilessly about his bright orange outfit instead of privately thinking it's stupid. It's the way he tugs her ponytail and they bicker loudly about the sexual positions they do in front of people. It's the way, at night, she finds that if he tosses and turns because of Kyuubi, she'll sit up and calm him by stroking her fingers through his hair. It's the way they both think of terribly new and naughty things to do and they do them, wherever and whenever they please, be it a street corner or the roof or the apartment she was supposed to be staking out on a particularly boring mission. It's the way she sleeps over at his place so often it's like she lives with him, and she hasn't even really been at her own house except in passing for weeks. There's even most of her clothes in his closet and cartons of her favorite ice cream in his fridge. It's how they fight almost all the time and yet almost all the time every fight ends with sex, and then somehow the issue is resolved. It's how when she cries, he always always knows, even though Ino prides herself on her ability to hide any evidence of saltiness on her face.

It's these things that confuse her to no end.
She can't see life without him, she needs him. He would be broken in a thousand more places without her, he needs her.

But they both don't know what they are, because she does cry. There are the nights when they don't look at each other, the days when they can't even talk. There are the hours where he stares into the distance and doesn't let her wear pink. The moments where her snappy remarks make him snarl with true anger and the times when his annoying loud self is too much and she storms off in a true rage. The days when she's forced to endure missions with sand nins or spike haired smart-alecks, and the most she can do when she comes to him at night is sob into his shoulder before falling asleep. There are the days he walks back and forth in front of the Uchia Compound doors as though he was thinking very, very hard about vandalizing the symbol. How sometimes he looks at her funny, as though he was seeing her differently, and sometimes she imagines him with a spiky black pony-tail or a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

It's when they realize they don't say 'I love you', and they see that they are still gathering up pieces of themselves that make them notice they aren't really what they seem.

Ino knows they look the picture-perfect twosome, with their blonde hair and blue eyes, with their loud mouths and naughty grins,

But she knows they don't know what they are, or where they're going, and knows they're just coasting through the trials of their own heartbreak and if you were to ask them what they were to each other, both would smile and laugh it off, or find something important that needs doing rather then answer the question, like suddenly remember that the plastic plants need watering or the freezer door was left open, and then later they look back and realize they don't have an answer.

Who knows what will happen? As a ninja, Ino has never bothered herself much with the future, seeing as how it could all end on the next mission, so she will do nothing. She can't figure herself out anyway, much less Naruto.

Maybe she doesn't want to.

They walk through the town and he is rough and golden and foul-mouthed and so energetic, she loves it. Still, when the genius passes in front of them with a nod and a puffball sand skank pulls possessively at his flak vest collar, her heart rises to her throat and her eyes go icy and her posture goes stiff,

But he's grabbing her wrist in his large calloused hand and squeezing it, and he shoots her a look from his bluer then blue eyes.

Her lips quirk up at him ruefully and then she's bopping his head because she was in the middle of an argument about something vital to the degree of soreness she'll be having in a few hours and why on earth had they stopped talking just when she had thought of the perfect rebuttal?

Everyone giggles and sighs in admiration as the perfect couple goes by and Ino and Naruto continue on, bickering and hand-holding and grinning, and they know what the townspeople don't; that they have absolutely no clue what the other means to them self.

But for the moment with the sun on them and Inos fingers warm in Narutos scorching palm, when his eyes a laughing fragilely clear blue when they see her and perhaps hers are resembling that same delicate shade, she feels more happy than sad because of him, and he feels more full than empty because of her,

And so both of them really couldn't care less.

fin

A/N: Oh boy. Took way too long and could be a lot better but generated new ideas to think on and cultivate. Yay!

See when I think of Naru/Ino stories I think of Naruto in his pimp form of sexiness. He fits that for her I believe. This kind of delves a bit deeper into a more serious relationship, and I tried to mix his raunchy side in a bit but I think I didn't do that stupendous of a job. Oh well. Sexy Beast Naruto and Slutty Ino can wait for a new story another day:D In the meantime it is sleepy time for me. Yawn.

Feedback is always great, but I don't need it particularly, seeing as how I write this for myself first, though I'll still love you forever if you review, lovely people. So constructive criticism only please, and no bashing the pairing. You should've stopped reading once you saw the letters saying "Ino/Naruto" if you don't like them together!
Thankyous!