Sakura crossed her arms defiantly.
"I am not talking about this."
She had that especially dangerous expression she adopted either when she was refusing a proposal or prepared to attack someone. In this case, either or both of those courses of action seemed possible. She was unlikely to be swayed by the fact that they were before several witnesses in a public bar. Having beaten up Naruto in the middle of the village without shame, she was not the type of woman to be moved by circumstance when her temper reached that critical point.
"What have you got to hide?" Ino responded slyly. "Just how dirty is our favorite blossom?"
The query succeeded in bringing color to Sakura's cheeks. Her arms untangled themselves from one another and fell rather lifelessly to the table. The implication, if indeed it was subtle enough to be a mere implication, was plentiful enough to put further objection at a standstill for the present. Words one does not speak have a tendency to come to life in the minds of others as things they were perhaps not meant to be. A deep and slightly perverted imagination was capable of wrongly translating Sakura's reluctance.
"I agree with Sakura," Kakashi uttered seriously.
His first words of the night. He had not spoken a word before this point and no one had addressed him. It was a wonder why he agreed to come to the bar if not to socialize. His enduring silence implied that he would have rather remained at his abode. For whatever reason, Kakashi often joined them on these friendly outings, despite having no true inclination to do so. Ino wondered if it was the guest list that attracted him.
Ino turned to Kakashi with a devious grin on her features. She did not see the man, who had secured two votes against her idea, as a threat to the intended conversation. Rather, she regarded him as a needed adversity for things to go as planned. Her tongue and brain simply needed to work together as one single entity. She could not hope to truly out-smart a man like him, but she could twist him a bit into her favor.
"What's the harm?" she demanded, smirking. "We're all friends here. We should be able to talk openly. Don't pretend you're not intrigued."
That was the complicated part of the equation. Most of the assembled friends were intrigued, but to openly engage in a topic of that nature also turned them off. They were trapped between a desire to know and a desire to keep their mouths firmly shut.
"Oh, come on!" Ino urged impatiently. "Are we going to play innocent? I know for a fact that every one of you here has one. Anyone who says they don't is lying."
Choji shook his head, appearing somewhat disgusted. He had been reluctant to come in the first place, as he had had a feeling that Ino was going to incite another conflict. His instincts apparently had not failed him. He wished he hadn't neglected them and accepted the invitation regardless.
"I don't get why you even want us to talk about this," he replied stubbornly.
"Hey, we can't just sit around gossiping or talking about our missions," Ino answered promptly, her smirk enlarging. "We should talk about something fun for a change."
Her idea of fun was contrary to everyone else, it appeared. She rushed ahead before Shikamaru, who seemed on the verge of interjecting, could break into speech. Her chance to pounce had arrived and she could not surrender it. If she was going to win, she needed to seize her first chance for an attack. Shikamaru, being intelligent and knowing her character, might be able to dispel the entire thing if she acted too late.
"Everyone has their little kink. That one thing that excites them above and beyond the limit. I'd bet anything that everyone at this table has that one special thing that just drives them wild. Which one of you is brave enough to admit it?"
Shikamaru, Choji, and Hinata shrank down in their seats as much as was allowed, similar to little children who desired to be passed over for a difficult question. Kakashi, Naruto, and Sakura reacted to the question in a more rebellious fashion. Although none of the three volunteered an answer, there was no flinching or otherwise on their side of it. Naruto simply blushed at the words, Kakashi's expression did not change, and Sakura crossed her arms yet again.
"I'll go first, just to show you it isn't a big deal," Ino declared cheerfully.
She seemed unfazed by the unspoken feedback. Nothing could steer her away from her path, even the hesitation of her friends. She knew without study or excess of mental prowess that they were all secretly interested. But the first to speak was the first to be damned, therefore she herself would have to show them it was nothing to be afraid of.
Ino plunged into a long-winded, but surprisingly clean, story of how she came to enjoy sexual bondage. She described how she stumbled across it in a piece of literature and her interest in it blossomed from there. She proceeded to delve into many intricate volumes to banish her worst images of the practice. Through research, she amassed a large mental library of knowledge about bondage. She was now somewhat of an expert on the subject. She calmly explained to her friends that it was in part about how much one trusted their partner. That was one of the beauties of the act, Ino told the others with seriousness. It was a trust exercise that served the dual purpose of arousing her. The way she told the story, it was as if she was talking about the most natural thing in the world.
"I proved my courage," she concluded cheerfully. "I wonder whose next..."
The rest of the assemblage were a bit astonished by what had just happened. The way Ino had spoken, they could almost believe she had been speaking of the weather or some other common event. A story which could have become a pornographic tale had become nothing of the sort. The words had flowed so confidently from Ino's lips that even the meager erotic details sounded innocent when recalled. In essence, the story was not about sex. It was about a young woman who found a part of herself she hadn't been aware of and then endeavored to journey deeper into this brand new territory.
With this fresh angle put on the topic, Naruto found himself able to speak.
"Bondage sounds great and all, but I kind of have a thing for the opposite. Having sex outdoors. Wide open spaces, fresh air, far away from everyone else... It's...a soothing thought, isn't it? I don't think I could ever be satisfied just doing it in a boring old bed time after time."
His self-assurance wavered slightly at the conclusion, mortified heat rushing to his cheeks. The words had slipped out underneath his radar. Ino's frank story had managed to dislodge them. In truth, he would have spoken them earlier if Ino had required him to go first.
"Your love of nature is commendable," Ino responded, without a single touch of sarcasm. "What about you, Shikamaru? What makes you tick?"
But Shikamaru closed his eyes at her question. He crossed his arms akin to Sakura, although it was a gesture of safehold rather than defiance. He spoke in a severe tone that failed to conceal his throbbing contempt. He, unlike the rest of them, still possessed the same mindset the introduction of the subject had created.
"Sorry, but this conversation isn't for me. I don't have any kinks or fetishes."
To his surprise, Ino accepted this without a fuss. She was apparently not astonished or offended by his claim. She simply turned her attention to Choji with the same query on her lips. She received the same response, but again it did not bother her. For all the pushing she had done on the topic's behalf, she seemed content to glide over outright rejection of it. Her only reply was a careless shrug, before her gaze shifted to Sakura.
"Naruto and me already confessed. Is it just going to be the two of us who can be honest?"
Sakura's eyes slid rapidly from Naruto and Ino, her face turning a shade of embarrassed rose. She was weighing the consequences of keeping silent, versus the consequences of being open. Naruto and Ino had both spoken frankly without any negative repercussions, so what did she have to fear? It wasn't as if her kink was that bad. Besides, she told herself with confidence, one person at this table already knew of it.
Reeling in an immense breath, she began to speak with newfound valor.
"I at first thought I wouldn't be into it," she commenced easily. "I thought I would try it once, laugh about it the next morning, and never do it again. A week later, I was trying to figure out why normal sex seemed so tame all of the sudden. It excited me and all, but I kept wanting something more out of it. It wasn't my partner's fault. I just couldn't get a grip on that unique type of excitement I had when I experimented with domination and submission. And I discovered I'd much rather dominate than submit."
"What a shock," Naruto muttered sarcastically.
For this unwelcome comment, he received a blow upside the head from Sakura.
"Thank you for that insightful and amusing input!" she responded threateningly. "Anything to add?"
Rubbing his abused ahead, Naruto informed her that he had nothing more to say on the topic. This was lucky, as he noticed that the pink-haired twenty-three-year-old was not skimping on the alcohol. An angry drunk Sakura would be a death sentence for him. Her temper was a nightmare of its own when she was merely sober. If her inhibitions completely dissolved, an incoming disaster could be expected.
"That's me, Sakura, and Naruto," Ino concluded, satisfied. "I suppose Hinata is out completely, although we can all figure out what her kink is."
She looked pointedly at the furiously blushing black-haired woman, who had covered her ears at the outset of the conversation. She was unlikely to contribute anything to the topic. Hinata was in no possible way the type of female who would openly discuss her kinks or even admit she had kinks. But as Ino had stated, it did not take one with extraordinary mental prowess to figure out the kink of a woman like her. Of course, perhaps everyone was erroneous and her kink was the exact opposite of what it seemed to be based on her personality. These things do not always match up flawlessly with the person's character.
"How about you, Kakashi?" Ino queried, highly interested. "You've been quiet this whole time."
Kakashi hadn't spoken, but he had also not retreated into the world of Make-Out Paradise. He seemed to be observing the conversation with minimal, but certainly present, interest the entire time. A flicker of entertainment had darted across his features when Naruto spoke of wanting to have relations outdoors. Other than that, his reactions had been too subtle for anyone to read them.
Now that she had asked the question, Ino was ravenously curious. Kakashi was always a very closed sort of man. It was difficult to imagine him having any sort of kink, but when the idea came to her mind she decided that he must have one. His lust for filthy books could have planted some little fetish in his brain. And his continued perusing of said literature might have caused this fetish to grow over time into a definite want.
Every eye at the table fastened onto Kakashi, even Hinata's. Suddenly every single one of them wanted to hear whatever sentences fell from this man's lips. Their own inquisitiveness had been aroused by Ino's question. They were all collectively wondering of Kakashi's answer, their brains rapidly forming theories. If indeed he had an answer.
"I don't have a real fetish or kink," the man himself replied nonchalantly. "I'll gladly do anything I can to please my lover by adhering to their fetishes and kinks. If I have any kink, it's that I can't feel entirely pleasured if my partner isn't. You might decide that makes me submissive by default, but I can go either way...depending on what my lover wants."
He stood up, book in hand and a pleasant smile on his features. Everyone was staring at him, one or two of them disappointed by his answer. Ino herself had expected something of such epic proportions that it would leave them forever speechless and unable to look at Kakashi the same way ever again. While his reply had been unexpected, it left no one incapable of speech. He was the same Kakashi Hatake he had been before revealing his supposed fetish.
"I'll be going now," Kakashi informed the group serenely.
A puzzled Naruto leapt into the silence before Kakashi could exit. Something Kakashi had said was pestering his mind. He didn't find anything unbelievable in the other man's explanation, but a little detail struck him as earning a follow-up question.
"Hey, Kakashi-sensei, you said you'd do anything to please your lover. How many people have you had sex with?"
Kakashi stared for a moment, as if surprised that such a query could arise. There was a little more color to his cheeks than was natural during this time. He appeared on the edge of replying, but caught the words before they could escape. He turned away as if no one had bridged the quiet. He left without a word, his presence leaving behind a certain air of mystery.
However, the mystery only lasted for all of two minutes.
Sakura laughed, a rather smug grin on her face. She apparently found something amusing in Kakashi's dramatic exit, even though the others merely found it confusing and impressive. While everyone looked at each other with bemusement, she openly expressed her mirth at some unknown fact. She finished her fourth drink and spoke to the table at large.
"He's trying to pretend he's slept with hundreds of women, when he's only slept with one," she told everyone. "I promise that the woman he lost his virginity to taught him a lesson that took his ego down a peg. Luckily, she was more than happy to do it."
Once again, Naruto was utterly lost about what was going on. Even more so than he had been prior.
"How would you know?" he demanded.
Looking very pleased with herself, Sakura uttered complacently,
"Who do you think was the first one to find out about Kakashi's kink?"