A/N: A short Ino/Sakura drabble. Because the pairing needs more love. It's cute and obvious! (And Tara made me do it.) Also, please note that I ADORE Rock Lee. To death. But...well, you'll see. It's for the sake of IC-ness!
Title is thanks to me having ZERO SLEEP. In fact, so is this fic. Unbeta'd, unproof'd, unedited. RAW, baby. Unf.
Pig Catching Fish
They were going shopping. It was the third time this week, and Sakura was starting to wonder what exactly Ino was up to, considering she usually only let her shopaholic side out when she was scheming or needed a distraction. And considering nothing really bad had happened recently, Sakura would be more than willing to put good money on her friend trying to come up with some ingenious plan to do something spectacularly trivial.
"Ino! Get down here already, I'm not waiting all day for you!" Sakura shouted up the stairs from the living room, where her friend's mother was smiling politely at her and had already tried to stuff her full of cookies. The cookie-stuffing part was normal, but the polite smile was…different.
Usually she was greeted with the same hustle-and-bustle mother who was rarely in one place at the same time, watering flowers here, shelving books and dusting there, always making a strangely comfortable conversation as Sakura sat around for Ino to get her ass downstairs and out the door.
Now, she was being smiled at. Silently. Almost like she was expecting Sakura to start lecturing on medical jutsu or start on her life story – a story that Ino's mother probably already knew anyway.
Sakura had glared down Akatsuki, stood up to Sannin, and was left shifting uncomfortably and fidgety before the might of Ino's mother waiting patiently for something she didn't know.
"I'LL BE DOWN SOON, FOREHEAD GIRL," Ino roared down the stairs. "JUST SIT DOWN AND WAIT ALREADY."
Which probably meant ten more minutes. Sakura sighed a little helplessly, smiling back at Ino's mother.
"So how old are you now, Sakura? Seventeen?" Ino's mom suddenly piped up. Her voice was dangerously slick.
"Ah, yes, I turned seventeen about a month ago," Sakura smiled back.
"Ino's seventeen too," the mother said, as if the news meant something. If the woman was hinting that they were spinsters, Sakura was going to walk up the stairs and DRAG Ino out of the house, perfect hair or no. "And I heard that the rest of your team is engaged."
"To each other, yes," Sakura muttered wryly, trying to hide the fondness that always crept into her voice at the subject of her teammates.
"Shikamaru and Temari are engaged too, you know," Ino's mother continued on. "And Chouji's been promised to a family friend's daughter since he was born."
Sakura just nodded, having no idea where this was going.
"And we all know the scandal with the Hyuuga heir and her teammates."
Sakura blinked, not really knowing why exactly her best friend's mother was going on about threesomes and couples and marriage like this.
"You and Ino are the only leaf-nin of your age left single," she said cautiously. "And I know that Rock Lee has been trying to get-"
"Oh I'm sorry, there's Ino now," Sakura smiled out hurriedly, standing up and storming her way up the stairs and into Ino's room as graciously as possible.
The blonde blinked at her from the bland bench in front of the vanity, lipstick in hand as she stared at her friend's ascent via the mirror. But the shock passed quick enough, leaving Ino glaring at her and slamming the tube of lipstick down on the counter, long hair swishing in that playful way it'd developed over the years as the girl stood up.
"I TOLD you to wait," Ino snapped at her, taking another moment to tie her forehead protector around her neck. "You can't even do that right, can you?"
"I can when your mother isn't trying to get me to go out with Rock Lee," Sakura said, wincing at the thought. "I've never seen her like that! She sat me down and started talking about relationships and how we're the only ones our age that are single-"
"She did WHAT?" Ino squeaked out, blushing furiously.
"Your mom was saying we were going to be single the rest of our lives!" Sakura said, throwing her hands up in the air, exasperated. "What have you been telling her, Ino-pig?!"
"…Well you have to admit that everyone else our age has someone," Ino said, too soft for her friend to trust the chiding tone of her voice. "Some even have two!"
Sakura frowned, hands on her hips. "Give Hinata a break already. They're happy."
"But we can't all be happy, can we?" Ino taunted. "Sasuke's mad for Naruto, Shikamaru's troubled himself enough for Temari that he's probably going to marry her as soon as he feels like it, and everyone else is happily married or engaged to who they want."
"There's plenty of fish in the sea," Sakura frowned, finally seeing that the root of all their shopping trips. No scheming, just worry.
"But I never wanted just a fish, Sakura," Ino said, voice almost pleading. "Only THE fish, don't you get it?"
"…Ino, 'THE fish' is gay and living with Naruto," Sakura said. She was trying to understand, really, but sometimes these little jumps in Ino-logic just made no sense to her.
The blond looked at her scathingly. "Such a big forehead for such a tiny brain."
"I'm not the one who thought Sai was attractive," Sakura said triumphantly. "You always go for the weird ones, I swear."
Ino smiled. "…Yeah. I guess I do." She closed the distance between them, a hand running through Sakura's shoulder-length hair. "Why didn't you ever grow it out again?" The other girl smelled like exotic flowers, tangy and sweet.
Sakura shrugged. "It's more practical. If you get your hair grabbed once, it can happen again." She paused. "I grew it was long for Sasuke-kun. And when I got over him, I just…kept it short." Sakura smiled at her friend. "Why'd you grow yours back out?"
Ino grinned. "Because I wasn't trying to beat you any more."
Sakura noticed this was something new when her friend's other hand ghosted from her hair to her jawline, tracing it carefully with perfectly manicured nails and calloused fingertips.
"Then what are you trying to do?" Sakura asked quietly, eyes intent on her friends' darker eyes as they smirked, half-lidded, the distance between them closing so that she could practically taste Ino's breath – spicy and sweet with a bit of a bite, like biting into a lime in the middle of winter.
Ino's smirk was downright smug as she said, with feigned innocence, "I'm just catching my fish."
The kiss was sharply chaste, a bitingly harsh peck that sent Sakura's mint eyes wide open just as Ino's dangerous ones slid closed, leaning in for another longer, still painfully simple kiss, and drew back a bit. One hand was on Sakura's hip. The other rested in her sugar pink hair, right at the base of her skull.
Ino was taller, not to mention naturally stronger. She could easily pull Sakura back into another kiss. She could even possibly fend off an all-out attack from Sakura, even though it'd be a dangerous gamble to try. But still, she just smiled at her best friend - holding, soothing, waiting.
Sakura could easily shove her off and storm down the stairs.
Instead, just as easily, she leaned forward again, smiling, and kissed Ino back, delighted in the pressure and the easy slide against each other, content with how her own arms wrapped around the other woman, and tried not to giggle giddily against her best friend's lips.
But with the way Ino pulled back, smiling but obviously a bit confused, Sakura had failed that little bit.
"What's so funny, forehead girl?" Ino asked.
Sakura's giggling turned into a full-out laugh as she held on to her friend's slender form and chuckled, possibly squeezing mercilessly.
"Everything just makes so much more sense now!" Sakura said. "First, your mom was trying to tell me to go out with YOU, not fuzzy-eyebrows!"
"Thank god," Ino muttered, laughing at the thought. "I told her I had a crush on you years ago, and ew."
"But then… then I realized that everyone in Team 7 is now gay!" Sakura laughed again, bursting into giggles. "I thought I was just the token straight ninja, but apparently not!"
"You're so weird," Ino muttered, shaking her head at the comment.
"Well you're still a pig," Sakura retorted, and then smiled, leaning forward and giving Ino a far less chaste kiss, one that stretched deep and long, pressing them together before Sakura pulled back.
She leaned in, smiling softly, and whispered into her best friend's ear, "But you're my pig now."
"That's the sweetest insult I've ever heard," Ino grinned. "Kind of creepily possessive too, but I must be very messed up in the head because I find that hot!"
"You are messed up in the head," Sakura agreed, and pulled away, latching their hands together and starting down the stairs. "It's because you switch them around so much."
"What- hey! I'm not done with my hair yet!" Ino glared as Sakura pulled her down the stairs.
"It's gorgeous," Sakura stated, and flipped them around to more easily push her girlfriend out the door. "Let's go shopping."
"You two have fun now!" Ino's mom called out from the kitchen, one of those knowing tones in her voice that made Sakura wonder if Ino's room could be heard from the room below or something equally devious.
"I can guarantee it," Sakura smiled politely back at the woman, and closed the door behind them.