Oh, wow! I'm so happy I got so many reviews, and all in one day, too! I hope you enjoyed reading the first chapter as much as I liked writing it. Just so you know, anything that may be incorrect grammar-wise is stylistic in purpose. Actually, I really just like to write like that, it makes it super-fun to do so. I hope I get Kakashi's demeanor right in this part. And I also really hope Sakura doesn't seem too foolish here, either. She's just sort of supposed to be quirky. Even though in 500+ chapters of manga she's never seemed very quirky at all, just a little volatile.
Let's just pretend Sakura is as cool as I want her to be!
I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does.
Chapter Two : Friday night, in the kingdom of doom.
"Ino, I don't want to go out. Especially not in… that."
Ino wrinkled her nose and scrunched up her face into that what-are-you-saying? expression she was so, so good at. She shook her outstretched arm at Sakura one more time – the one brandishing the tiny scrap of black satin she wanted her to wear.
"Don't be such a stick in the mud, Sakura! This is the first actual weekend you've been free on in, like, months," she whined. "Your social life is so dead. I mean, you never go out when you have hospital work the next day – which is every day – so you might as well go out and have one fun night while it still suits your morals. This is an occasion of ridiculously important importance! We should be celebrating that! But that would defeat the purpose. Hm. Just come on! "
Ino was very, very good at pushing all of Sakura's bad buttons. She knew Sakura was liable to lose it whenever she rambled on and on and happen to touch on the point that her life was incredibly boring and that she never had any sex and passed on the suggestion that she never had any fun.
Not that Sakura thought that was true at all. Nope.
Ino examined the fingernails on her free hand without concern, still waggling the shiny smooth dress in Sakura's direction.
A vein throbbed in Sakura's forehead. She briefly – very briefly, mind you – pondered the consequences of slaughtering a pig in a rented apartment room. She only held herself back on the thought of losing the hefty deposit that Ino hadn't contributed to.
She snatched the black dress from Ino with a horrific snarl.
"Fine. I'll come with you. But!" she hissed, seeing Ino's far too pleased expression widen even further. "Only if you promise not to try to set me up with anyone. Or try to make me drink anything. Or try to get me to dance with you. Or anyone else. Or have someone else we know try to convince me to do anything else – or the above – either."
Ino's cornflower eyes glittered maliciously. "Deal," she smirked, sticking her hand out.
Sakura shook it and knew the second the skin of their palms touched that she was screwed, Ino-planned or not. She could smell some loophole she'd missed from a mile away. She span on her naked heel out of the tiny living area – the room big enough only to hold a couch, a dinky television on wheels, a vase and a coffee table – with an angry harrumph, slamming the door to her bedroom.
Maybe it would have worked out better to kill Ino. Even if they did get their deposit back, the Pig would surely demand "her half".
Ino chuckled. She was only slightly impressed. Sakura's fiery temper had barely surfaced, meaning that she was simply too restless to refuse a night out. She shook her head and pushed back her own chair, moving to get dressed herself.
Sakura didn't like this dress. She didn't like this dress at all, in fact. It wasn't a matter of the style – because she was so small-breasted, strapless looked good on her no matter what. Or the length, even if it wasn't as long as she had hoped it would be. It didn't nearly reach her fingertips, even when she'd scooted it down as low as she could without her pint-sized boobs oozing out the top. Or the plainness, she liked unembellished and simple clothing, it made her think of elegance. Or the tightness, or the cut, or the slightly shiny fabric that should have made her stomach look fat but didn't.
Sakura just didn't look good in black. She was too fair skinned and small-framed. Black swamped her and made her look tiny – and she already had the figure of a fourteen year old. She looked like a kid, like a teeny-bopper in her older sister's dress. She looked sick and pale and like a little fool, and she didn't want to go out at all. She wanted to melt out of her dress and into the carpet, or, better yet, into her favorite pajamas and onto the couch with a gallon of ice cream and a soap opera.
But then Ino span into her room like a hurricane in a flouncy turquoise halter dress that was even shorter and tighter than hers, her boobs bouncing and her hair in curlers.
"That looks good, Forehead," she appraised. "I'm glad I rescued it from the clearance rack, I knew it would suit you."
Sakura moaned. "Ino, I look so young. Black has always looked bad on me. And it makes my hair look like a candy store. You backstabber."
"Oh, come on, Sakura! It's black! The classic color!" Ino waved her hands around her face like a windmill. "Every woman needs a sexy black dress to wear, don't be such a downer."
Sakura mumbled something along the lines of "terrible friends" and "incredible sales".
Ino steered the pink-haired woman into her own room. "I mean, you don't even have anything else on, you know? Shoes make the outfit, in my opinion."
She blathered away about how the shades of the less important flowers in a bouquet were meant to bring out the beauty of the main flower while she rifled through her closet. Which was absolutely full of impractical shoes.
Sakura inched towards a pair of plain black pumps that Ino had thrown behind her in her rampage. She didn't want any attention, honestly. She didn't need any. She could play Ino's supporting flower any day.
She had her left foot settled comfortably into its home for the night when the remaining shoe was ripped out of her hand and its twin off her foot.
"Ino-pig!" she screeched at the blonde.
"Oh, shut it, will you?" Ino rolled her eyes at her friend's scorching temper. "I'm not letting you tramp around in black shoes and a black dress. That's so absolutely boring, Sakura."
She patted her hair, slightly ruffled from Sakura's blazing gaze, back into curling perfection.
Sakura's eye twitched at the mention of "boring", and a blush flared across her china-doll skin at the phrase "tramping around".
Ino rolled her eyes again, the motion exacerbated by her pale eyebrows rising to meet her equally pale hairline. "Don't be such a prude. And try these on." Sakura was shoved a pair of deep, deep indigo-purple heels. The shiny patent leather yielded a warped image of Sakura all hidden in the end of the color spectrum and made her big forehead even bigger.
Sakura sighed and pulled on the heels. Who was she trying to impress? Herself? Some unknown man?
It's not like she would. So she stopped caring. She looked down at her feet and at her chipped red nail polish through the tiny peep-toe of the pump.
Yeah, nothing to impress.
She heaved herself onto her feet and wobbled just slightly. She minced forward, the four inch heels seeming like stilts to legs used to flat ninja sandals.
"See, Sakura? You look great! I told you, shoes are the most important!" Ino gushed and gushed and gushed some more, her words the pus from a freshly lanced boil. She pushed Sakura more, this time into the bathroom.
In the time it took for Sakura to heal one tiny broken, no, fractured, finger bone – or possibly even less – Ino had swung a simple silver charm necklace around Sakura's throat, and brushed black eyeliner and mascara around her green-bottle eyes, and painted candy flavored lip gloss onto her pink-petal lips, and gathered and braided her long pink tresses into a sloppy – but still nice and elegant – French braid.
"Done!" She grinned, turning on her strappy silver stilettoed heel – when had she put those on? – and pulling out her curlers as she left the cramped bathroom.
She was halfway out of the door, clutch and house key in hand, before she realized Sakura was still in the bathroom. Ino walked back into the apartment, her heels making high clack-clacking noises against the linoleum.
"You know," Ino started. "I'm ready to go. And if we don't head out now, all the good places'll get crowded."
Sakura sighed and looked up from tapping her fingers against the sink bowl. Ino's makeup was already done. She brushed past her roommate and grabbed the only real purse she had – a silly red leather thing not much bigger than a few paperback books on a long, thin strap – from her room.
"Then, let's go."
Sakura's pumps made hollow thunk-thunks against the linoleum, and those sounds were about as solid as her resolve.
Spun gold and strawberry ice cream walked into a bar. Konoha was no tiny town – ninja village was an inappropriate moniker – but it wasn't exactly a burgeoning metropolis, either. So, it really shouldn't have been such a surprise that there were familiar faces lining the bar and the small tables and the dance floor. It shouldn't have been a nasty shock to Sakura's gut to see familiar hair and a rowdy waltz caused by some old chuunin friend and well-known barks of laughter and shouts of recognition.
Ino scuttled off to a table in a far corner of the room to sit with another third of her old, old team with one fast are-you-gonna-be-ok? glance at Sakura.
Sakura was embarrassed. She was standing in the big, crowded room with no bubbly friend to hang off of, too boring to keep even someone who knew her well occupied. She considered slinking out the way she'd come, but went to the bar instead, sliding into one of the swiveling vinyl stools.
"Warm sake, please," she requested from the ruddy bartender. She'd picked up a taste for the drink during the later of her long years as apprentice to Tsunade, much to the chagrin of Shizune.
She wheeled about slightly, the very tips of her shoes brushing the rungs of the stool. She span in the limited 90 degrees that bar-stool ball bearings allowed before she realized her sake had come and she looked eight and silly.
She stared sadly down at her tiny porcelain cup. She wanted to drown herself in it, but she downed it in one gulp instead. This isn't so bad, she chided herself. You're just being a big baby. People go to bars to drink, you don't have to make it about getting hit on. I mean, bars aren't for getting hit on. Originally, people just came here to -
Her positive, historic thinking was rudely interrupted by a call of "Hey, Pinky!" from over her shoulder. Some nameless chuunin or lower-jounin inched a hand onto her bare shoulder, his forehead protector reflecting the dim lights of the bar. Some silly, plain-faced teenager or early, newborn twentysomething taking advantage of the fact that most establishments in ninja villages didn't care about the age of its drinkers.
"Why don't you come and join me and my friends? Over there, in that booth. We could use some young company, and you look pretty lonely, babe," he smirked down her bodice. Which was stupid, Sakura thought, because she was probably about as well endowed as he was.
"Who said she was alone?" asked a smooth, deep, familiar voice. A warm, gloved hand smoothed up her bare upper back and Kakashi Hatake sat down in the stool next to her.
One massive brick wall of a libido killer of a cock block of a sweet savior in Kakashi Hatake. That wasn't something she'd ever thought she would experience.
"She's too old for you, anyways," his one eye creased, and he gave a friendly wave and a not-so-friendly spin inducing shove to the anonymous and now disgruntled fellow. "Bye-bye!"
"You shouldn't say anything about being too old, sensei," she scoffed.
"Just looking out for one of my old favorite students!" His eye creased again – ignoring her quip, even more of an upside-down v than ever.
He looked the same as ever. The one enormous shock of silver-bright hair and dark grey eye. He was dressed in his flak jacket and ninja pants – he looked like he'd just come from a mission. He probably had, she mused. He worked like a dog, even if he acted the lazy man.
He still wore his silly mask.
"You only ever had three students, Kakashi," she muttered at length into her sake cup. "Would you like some?" She gestured towards her porcelain bottle.
"Drinks? On my student? Oh, absolutely!" His eye was so tightly closed and acutely angled now it was like the corner of a sheet of crisp paper.
Sakura rolled her eyes and motioned for the bartender to bring over another cup for sake. As Kakashi filled his cup, she piped;
"I haven't seen you in a long while, Kakashi. Where've you been, some long mission?"
He eye-creased some more and took a swig of sake through his mask. He looked like a cat grinning. She wanted so badly, even after all these years, to look under his mask.
"A better question to be asked is; where've you been, Sakura?"
Kakashi really didn't know why he felt so compelled to interfere. It was Sakura, and he knew she could take care of herself. Probably even better than he could.
But she was attracting a lot of casual glances. And stares and ogles, too. It was a sight to see, little Sakura Haruno dressed up.
Though, if he used his proper head, she really wasn't little at all anymore.
She looked like a rainbow. Her bright, bright pink hair and jade eyes and vermillion purse and shiny shoes that looked like a dark blue all winked around a smooth sheath of black. And her long, long, lean pale arms and legs flowed out of it and twitched with power in each movement. And when he looked closely, he could see a narrow silver chain hanging from her delicate neck and the small charm – some flower, he thought – resting just above her breasts.
Not that he was thinking about her breasts when some insolent squid sauntered over to her and wrapped an arm around her and murmured something into her ear. Nor when he wandered over to her – not with purpose, either – and blocked that man's advances quicker than Sakura could've punched him through the door.
And he really wasn't – he wasn't, really – thinking about any parts of her body as he leaned across the bar and talked to her and shared a bottle of sake with her.
Especially not her breasts, and the low, low, probably pulled low dress that covered them.
Sakura's face wrinkled a little bit at Kakashi's countering question.
"I've been in Konoha, where else? I work at the hospital and go on missions and train and research. I do shinobi things."
Kakashi nodded sagely. "It is wise for the shinobi to do only what his job is and never have any fun."
Sakura agreed distractedly before blinking rapidly and looking affronted and shaking her head with a thousand nononos compressed into three tiny seconds.
"Hey!" She snapped. "I do too have fun!"
"In settings outside of the workplace?" Kakashi queried, looking at the ceiling.
Sakura harrumphed quietly. Kakashi chuckled.
"Ah, Sakura. You remind me too much of a young me."
Sakura raised her eyebrows at him and waved to order another bottle of sake, the first was practically empty.
"You've got a huge stick up your ass because you think being a shinobi is all work, Sakura," Kakashi's eye creased tight in preparation.
Sakura spewed a mouthful of – rather expensive – sake onto the wood of the bar. The bartender didn't look twice, just passed his dirty rag over the wet spot before moving on. Kakashi was happy she was paying.
"I… I have not got a stick up my ass!" Sakura spluttered. "I just… I enjoy my job! I like working at the hospital!"
"And that's fine, Sakura," Kakashi held up his palms as a method of diffusing peace and, if need be, self defense and protection from harm. "Just saying, you shouldn't pass up your friends and youth because you're buried neck deep in the work you love.
I was just like that when I was a few years younger than you," Kakashi said. "And I had absolutely no fun until I relaxed a bit. What's there to prove by not doing what you really want to do?"
To his surprise, instead of stoking her up higher with his remark, she burst like a too-full hot air balloon and slumped low in her seat. She sighed.
"Ino's right, I'm absolutely no fun," she muttered into another cup of sake. "I just didn't want to seem like such a kid. I thought taking my work more seriously would fix that."
Kakashi felt a little perturbed at that remark. He certainly wasn't prepared to have his one female student get all weepy on him, no matter how beautiful of a woman she was. He downed more sake – the last of their second bottle, they really came too small – and put a comforting hand around her shoulders.
"You've always been one of the most mature people I know," he said. And he said that mostly truthfully. "You were the least childish of team seven, yeah?"
Sakura nodded dumbly. The two sat in amiably uncomfortable silence. They drank more sake.
Abruptly, Sakura got up to leave. She pushed her stool away from the bar with a little too much force, nearly flying backwards. She swung her long legs onto the floor of the bar, and wobbled on the too-tall heels of her shoes.
Kakashi watched her in quiet amusement. "Let me help you home, Sakura."
Sakura's brow furrowed. "Pig's got the key, where'dshego?"
Kakashi assumed this Pig was her roommate, the blonde Yamanaka girl. Who happened to be nowhere in the vicinity of the bar. He glanced down at Sakura to gauge her reaction. The petite pink-haired woman was scowling at an empty table far away.
"Where'm I supposed to sleep?" She slurred very slightly, both (barely) drunk and tired. "She's got the key to the complex and the room, can't get in without 'em. No night clerk."
"Break in?" Kakashi suggested.
"We'd lose our deposit, hmph, my deposit," supplied the sobering Sakura. The mention of the deposit made her scowl further. "And Ino'll be out all night, banging some dude. Or dudes."
"Just come to my apartment," Kakashi supplied.
Sakura gave him a dead look. "I'm not sleeping with you, Kakashi." The thought made her blush (barely!) and think about naked senseis and little pug dogs.
Kakashi's eye crunched up tight and wallowed in some very pleasant imagery. "Of course not! Just stay the night, it's better than sitting outside your building until morning."
"Oh, yeah," it seemed to dawn on Sakura that not going home with Kakashi would mean sleeping outside.
She could always have roomed with another friend of hers – a girl friend of hers – but something made her want to rub this in Ino-Pig's face. Rub a handful of I-slept-with-Kakashi and a dash of lemon juice right into her perky nose. Even if she didn't sleep with him. Ino didn't have to know that.
Ha, she'd show the Pig what she really knew. Sakura Haruno was no two-bit twelve year old nor was she a sassy whore! She could sleep with whoever the hell she wanted, the hottest piece of –
"Sakura, you're drooling and I don't want you to fall asleep and drown in it, so I'll take that for an 'oh, yes, thank you so much senpai, I'm most honored to be allowed to sleep at your apartment'."
Sakura snorted – and she certainly was not drooling – and nodded.
"Sure, sure. Off we go, off we go."
And they went, two vague forms, one tall, one short, one drunk, one pretty close.
Thanks for reading, guys! Just as a note, my updates will generally never happen within one day of each other. The only reason this happened this time is because these first several parts of the story have been written for a long, long time and I'm just now getting to the publishing part. I'll try to update pretty regularly, about once a week.