Treadmill Lessons

"Let's go to the gym, we'll totally be skinny bitches!"

Sakura huffed and glared at her flushed friend next to her. Ino glanced back over to her friend with a fake smile, sweat dripping down her forehead and matting her damp hair into uneven clumps. Sakura snapped her head away from her best friend angrily and made a point to increase her treadmill speed by point-five. Huge mistake.

Who knew such an innocent sentence could cause so much pain?

Sakura contemplated giving up and passing out right there in the middle of the busy gym but that'd make her look bad and, of course, she'd promised her blonde idiot-of-a-bestie they'd do at least thirty minutes together.

She spared a glance at the treadmill screen and immediately regretted it. Only ten minutes had passed…

The rosette mentally cursed her best friend a thousand times over and cursed herself for being so out of shape. It wasn't like they needed to go to the gym, they weren't fat or anything. But Damn Ino (Sakura decided this would be her new nickname along with a few colorful others) just had to look through a K-POP magazine and just had to see SNSD's "killer hot bods" and just had to suggest a quickie at the gym. Sakura couldn't care less about her calves but of course she assumed the short work out would be a piece of cake and decided she had nothing better to do.

So here they were, sweating nonstop with red faces and miserable expressions. A few people even asked if they were okay and needed to stop. Ino stubbornly denied of course and Sakura didn't want to look like the lazy, giving up bum so she hung on to her word and continued to run for thirty—

Darn, it's only been twelve minutes now!

full minutes.

To her left she could hear Ino panting like a dog and whisper-chanting "think about Jessica's nice legs".

Sakura rolled her eyes and opted to people watch. Nothing special really, though more people seemed to be there than usual (as what she'd seen of gyms on TV). A few Asian girls on the stair-steppers talking about "tight little bottoms", a group of buff guys trying to impress people by lifting weights, the sounds of hip-hop from the aerobics class, and a few baseball games on the flat screen televisions up front.

The soft chimes of the glass door of the main entrance rang lightly throughout the room and Sakura looked up curiously.

She gasped and abruptly stopped moving, forgetting she was on a high-speed treadmill. Sakura cried out and tried to grasp the metal handles but, unfortunately for her, it was too late and she felt herself being pushed back, sliding off the treadmill completely and crashing into the wall behind her.


"Hey, temeeeee, hey!"

Sasuke sighed and mechanically flipped through another page in his novel, content with ignoring the loud blonde rampaging around in his apartment.

Said blonde appeared only moments later with a cup of shrimp instant ramen in one hand and reusable chopsticks in the other. Naruto let out a sheepish "oops" when he nearly ran into the coffee table, causing a bit of ramen juice to spill on the bamboo flooring.

Sasuke's eye twitched in annoyance but he said nothing.

"Yo, bastard, I have an idea."

Kill me now.

"Let's go to the gym, we'll totally be buff douches!"

No seriously, pull the trigger.

"No," Sasuke answered emotionlessly.

Naruto pouted and took a big step over to his boring friend in attempt to grab his attention.

"But teme," Naruto began, leaning forward.

As Naruto leaned forward his forgotten cup did as well causing the already filled to the brim ramen liquid to splash over—

Onto Sasuke's book.

Sasuke snapped closed his now soggy and illegible book, contemplating taking Naruto's chopsticks and jabbing them into the idiot's throat.

Deep breaths, Sasuke, in out…

The image of Naruto's face plastered on a punching bag suddenly became very appealing and Sasuke abruptly stood from his seat, walking past Naruto to pick up his keys.

"I have nothing better to do now, let's go."

Naruto grinned and followed his murderous best friend out the door.


"Sakura! Sakura, can you hear me!"

Sakrua groaned and willed her arms to cover her face and block out the sounds, only to find all of her limbs were aching and sore.

She finally allowed her mint-green eyes to slip open and focus only to see grey ceiling and a groupf of strangers surrounding her, a familiar blonde one in the center.

Sakura hissed in pain and attempted to stand up, only to have a firm hand on her chest push her back down.

"Don't move, hun," Ino ordered softly. Sakura thankfully complied and shut her eyes once more.

"Should I call an ambulance?"

"No, she should be fine."

"Are you sure? That gash in her head is bleeding pretty badly…"

Sakura's eyes shot open and panic filled her system.

"G-gash?" She stuttered nervously, arms painfully moving up to rest on her head.

Ino giggled and waved a dismissing hand.

"I'm just joking, it's not that bad!"

"Not that bad? What do you consider bad? So there is a gash? Am I going to die?"

Ino rolled her eyes and helped her paranoid friend to her feet slowly, the group of people standing over her backing up to make room, some leaving after they were sure she was still alive.

"Don't be a baby, you're fine!"

"Fine? Fine? Are you aware most skull fractures result in loss of brain matter which results into a vegetable state which eventually turns into death," Sakura recited from her medical textbook. Ino just sighed and ignore her somewhat nerdy friend as they walked to the exit of the building, many people still staring at them.

"Hey!"

The two turned around at the same time to see a blonde boy around their age running over with a white cloth being waved around in his hand. Once he was close enough, Naruto thrust the object towards the pinkette with a sheepish smile.

"This might help your headache, you wiped out pretty hard."

Ino snickered behind her and slipped away, heading to her car they rode in together.

Sakura blushed but thanked him and took the ice anyway, wondering how bad it must have looked to everyone else. Her embarrassing thoughts, along with any others, were immediately halted with the arrival of another teen with blackish-blue hair and obsidian eyes that were almost hypnotizing and scary.

He's the one I saw before I fell…gosh he's so freakin' hot!

"Be careful next time," He advised briefly, somewhat coldly.

Sakura resisted the urge to flinch and just smiled sheepishly, placing the ice pack to her head.

"I probably shouldn't run so fast on a treadmill," Sakura said awkwardly, "thanks again for the ice pack," she turned to leave along with Naruto in the opposite direction but a firm pull on her upper arm kept her in place.

Sasuke leaned over, his lips a hair's breath away from her right ear. Sakura's eyes widened in short and time seemed to be stuck in slow motion.

"You probably shouldn't gawk at people on a treadmill either," Sasuke whispered coolly before releasing her arm and turning to walk away.

Sakura stood dazed for a moment with a bright red face.