hands to [insert action here]
rating: m
genre: angst/friendship/romance
pairings: inoshikasaku
POV: Sakura
warnings: alcohol, smut, feelings about team 7, sakura's sense of self worth
other notes: feel free to skip this if polyfic isn't your cup of tea
word count: 5,143
The evening has spun down, leaving Ino's apartment a mess of empty bottles and demolished food stuffs. Naruto walked Hinata back to the Hyūga compound hours ago, with Lee dragging a giggling Tenten away soon after with a reminder that the two of them have a mission in the morning. When the rest of them started to make noise about getting everyone else home for the night, they'd all looked up to find Shino had disappeared at some point, presumably before he could be wrangled into managing Kiba. Chōji had offered to help Akamaru make sure a very drunk Kiba doesn't fall asleep in a doorway (again), since the Inuzuka's apartment is on his way. Which means that Sakura and Shikamaru are stuck on clean-up duty.
It's too bad Sai is out of the Village at the moment; he's read so many books on proper etiquette that he always insists on helping whomever's turn it is to host their regular get-togethers clean up, meaning that Sakura can usually duck out with a wave.
Ah, teammates. So useful.
She and Shikamaru trade amused eye-rolls as Ino orders them around, but though they grumble under their breath, it's Ino. There are much worse fates Sakura and Shikamaru would follow Ino through than cleaning up after a party with friends.
"Forehead!" Ino snaps.
"Yes, Pig." Sakura braces herself for another lecture on how she's useless at placing decorative pillows.
"Do you have a shift at the hospital tomorrow afternoon?"
And, well, that's better than getting yelled at over pillow placement. "No," Sakura answers, still on guard for a scolding. "I have tomorrow off."
"Excellent." And then Ino waves a bottle of sake at her.
Sakura inhales sharply. She isn't the fan of the drink her shishō is, but Sakura didn't spend years under the tutelage of Senju Tsunade and emerge not knowing her sake. And that is a bottle of very, very expensive sake in Ino's hand.
"I thought the party was over," Shikamaru drawls, collapsing onto the terrible couch that dominates Ino's now clean living room.
"The party," Ino declares, "is never over."
Once again this evening, Sakura and Shikamaru roll their eyes in unison.
Of course.
"What if I have something I need to be up for tomorrow morning?" Shikamaru asks.
Sakura sits on his feet and he scowls at her, pulling them out from under her.
Ino just looks at him. "Nice try. I know you're off for the next couple of days."
"Something could have come up."
Sakura turns, joining Ino in her wry disbelief.
It's Ino. As if she isn't completely aware of where Shikamaru is supposed to be at any given point of the day, if only so that she can yell at him if she catches him napping when he's supposed to be doing something else. (Sakura knows that that isn't it at all, that to reduce Ino's careful watch over her teammates does her a disservice. But it's an image Ino cultivates—all careless cruelty and bossiness—when the truth is something much softer and possessive than that.)
Shikamaru blinks and shrugs. "Well it could have." He pauses, looks at Ino's smirk, and sighs. "But nothing has. Yes, Ino, I'd love to stay and drink some more with you."
The "troublesome" is implied.
Ino rocks back on her heels, smug pleasure tugging at her mouth. "I'll go get us some cups then."
After she's returned and placed cups and bottle on the coffee table, Ino drops onto Shikamaru's stomach.
They lose the next couple of minutes to shoving, swearing, and elbows to vulnerable body parts, eventually somehow settling with Sakura pressed up close between Ino and Shikamaru, all thighs and shoulders and heat as they huddle together on the slightly too small couch.
Sakura drops her head against Shikamaru's bicep as he nurses the bruise that's sure to bloom on his cheekbone and Ino leans forward to pour.
"Drink." Ino shoves cups into their hands.
They drink.
And then they drink some more, their conversation meandering between disparate topics, lulling into comfortable silences, never landing anywhere in particular. Sakura and Shikamaru argue about a book. Ino regales them with amusing customer service stories. Shikamaru mocks the diplomats sent on behalf of the Daimyo that he was forced to put up with for the last week. They reminisce over a disaster of a mission from their chūnin days, in that short breath of a moment where they thought they knew heartbreak, not knowing what they would become, what they would survive.
It's a rhythm of conservation that she knows the same way she knows the susurration of her blood through her veins, the beat of her heart.
(Gods, who could have ever known they would make it here, all those years ago when Ino brushed the hair out of Sakura's face and told her to put her chin up? Who could have ever known they would make it? So young to have war in their bones, but so alive; Shikamaru and Ino warm and vital at her sides.)
"Ino," Sakura contemplates at one point, "you didn't steal this from the shipment the Mizukage sent Tsunade-shishō as a thank you gift for handling that thing with the pirate fleet, did you?"
Shikamaru's moan of despair rumbles through her and he buries his face in his hands.
Ino rolls her eyes and drops her head back against the couch arm that she's twisted herself to lean against. "Sakura, do I look dumb enough to steal alcohol from Senju Tsunade?"
Sakura just looks at her. "We've done it before."
Ino purses her lips. "Once." She sweeps her hair to drape over the edge of the couch. "Do I look dumb enough to do it again?"
Shikamaru moans louder. "Please tell me this isn't the favour you owe Genma for," he demands of his palms where his face is still buried. "I'm too young to die."
"Ah," Sakura says. "So you didn't steal it."
Ino sniffs. "Again, what do you take me for, an idiot?"
Sakura considers the mostly finished bottle. "Well," she decides, "might as well make the most of it."
She isn't expected anywhere tomorrow. She can always flee the village and go missing nin. Run to Suna, maybe. Gaara always does insist that he owes her for saving Kankuro. He'll probably protect her from her shishō's wrath.
"I'm going to die," Shikamaru sighs.
Ino shrugs and laughs.
He takes the cup when Sakura hands it to him though.
They finish the bottle.
Shinobi live short and painful lives. They take what they can, when they can. (And they are so brilliantly alive, now, when three years ago Sakura wasn't certain they would all make it here.)
Sakura is warm and the light in the room has turned sticky amber, like time has slowed and all there is and will ever be is the three of them here, tumbled together on Ino's terrible couch. She hums, soft and low, as Shikamaru cards through her hair, his thigh firm under her cheek. Ino's feet press against the small of her back, tucked between Sakura and the back of the couch.
Sakura feels her eyes grow heavy and they flutter, struggling against the weight, as she considers just letting herself fall through this moment and into sleep.
Shikamaru and Ino's conversation laps over her.
She drifts, carried by the sound of their voices and the warmth running through her veins.
An age passes.
Sakura resurfaces, sound slowly shifting from soothing nonsense to words to understanding.
Ino's laughing at her latest romantic misadventure, but there's something almost bitter underscoring the careless amusement she's projecting.
"Why bother sticking it out as long as you did?" Shikamaru asks. "Sounds like it was more trouble than it was worth."
Ino's shrug shakes the couch. "He might have been a jealous asshole, but gods Shika, the things that man can do with his tongue!"
Sakura shivers at the curl in Ino's voice and blinks her eyes open.
"No sex is worth getting yelled at for being good at your job, Ino," she rasps, voice edged with alcohol and sleep.
"He regretted the yelling," Ino promises, and Sakura wants to wrap herself around that dark viciousness. "But, I mean, I could put up with the misplaced jealousy when I could redirect it into frankly excellent angry sex."
Sakura wrinkles her nose.
She doesn't understand why Ino, beautiful deadly Ino who can crook her finger and have people at their knees for her, would put up with a bitter boy who couldn't understand exactly how important and vital her work is, couldn't understand how her work is what she is.
Sex, in Sakura's experience, is more work than it's worth.
The last thing she wants to do when she gets home from sixteen hours in surgery is to pretend that cold pawing at her breasts and five minutes of penetration does it for her.
"What's with that face?" Ino demands.
Sakura shrugs.
"Come on, Sakura. You know that multiple orgasms can excuse almost every sin."
Shikamaru coughs on a laugh, and Ino turns on him.
"You're a man, you couldn't understand."
"Oh no," he chuckles. "I am well aware of what giving multiple orgasms can get you forgiveness for."
Ino reaches forward and pats him on the cheek.
"Don't worry, Temari thanked me for training you up so good."
Sakura splutters and Shikamaru groans.
"Please don't tell me about how you and my ex-girlfriend hooked up. The mere thought of you two together is enough, let alone the reality. No one would survive."
"Thank you," Ino says, sounding flattered.
Sakura isn't sure that it was supposed to be a compliment. It's just the truth.
Ino and Temari working together…
Sakura knows where she would stand, and it would be at their backs as they burned the Great Elemental Nations to the ground.
"Anyways," Ino continues. "Yes, I can forgive a multitude of sins from a hook-up if the sex is good. But I was bored, and I really don't appreciate the implication that my name or my face got me my job."
Sakura bares her teeth in sympathy, the insult of that beating at her ribcage.
Shikamaru growls.
"Don't worry, it's handled," Ino assures them.
Sakura relaxes, her fists uncurling, but the fury remains, simmering in her veins.
Shikamaru's hands release the grasp they've twisted in her hair and Sakura hisses at the sudden loss of tension in her scalp.
"Sorry," he murmurs.
Sakura squeezes his knee in forgiveness.
Shikamaru doesn't have to apologize for the impulse to find the idiot and rip him apart for shadows to feed on.
The only reason Sakura isn't making plans is that she trusts that Ino dealt out exactly what the boy deserved. (Of course, that doesn't mean she isn't going to make sure that his every medical appointment from now on is uncomfortable. It's hard enough being a woman and what they are. And not every woman is Ino, capable of shattering anyone who would doubt her to pieces with little more than a touch of eye-contact and a smile.)
"You're worth more than that, Ino," Sakura tells her.
Ino shrugs. "I know. But I'm young and beautiful. I'll do whatever—and whoever—I want as long as it's fun, and when it stops being fun, I'll move on."
Sakura has to laugh at Ino's eyebrow wriggle and her salacious wink.
"Not all of us are waiting around for True Love. I've got better things to do. True Love can catch up."
And Sakura feels the laughter slide off her face, everything soft and lovely about the evening turning suddenly sharp.
It's an effort of will to not curl in on herself.
"Ino," Shikamaru barks. His hand curves around the back of Sakura's neck, pressing apologies into her spine.
Ino sighs and stands. She shoves Sakura further onto the couch and climbs on to face her. It's a tight fit; Ino's hands cupping Sakura's face, her leg thrown over Sakura's hip, her forehead pressed to Sakura's own.
Shikamaru huffs at the added weight of Ino's head joining Sakura's on his thigh, but he doesn't move, just shifts his hand up slightly to cup Sakura's skull and thread his fingers deeper through her hair.
"It's supposed to be fun, Sakura. It's not supposed to be so hard."
Sakura breathes in Ino's words, lets them settle in her lungs.
Maybe this time, they'll stick, and she'll learn how to stop loving boys who don't know how to look at her, boys who are wounded feral things who don't want to be healed.
(Sakura is a healer, it is in her nature, and her shishō taught her much but she never taught her how to stop.
You don't stop until the patient is dead.
And even then…
(Sakura carries forbidden jutsu curled under her tongue.))
She wants so badly to love with Ino's easy freedom. To flirt and bat her eyelashes and tug boys and girls into dark corners to grace them with the clever slide of her fingers and the soft press of her mouth.
Sakura wants to stop seeing Sasuke in every face she considers, his eyes burning accusation into her skin, as if her learning to let go were some kind of betrayal.
(It's a lie her mind concocts. Sasuke has never looked at her the ways she's wanted him to.)
Sasuke doesn't want her. He has never wanted her.
And Sakura is not Naruto, to chase eternally after a dream of shadow and smoke and half-forgotten screams.
She's so very tired of waiting for a boy who is never going to be able to give her back her love the way she needs him to.
(Her waiting isn't fair to either of them.
Sasuke doesn't know what to do with the dreams she painted, those long cold years where she was alone and teamless.
She doesn't either, now that the possibility of them being realized is so close and never more far away.
Sasuke isn't the boy she dreamed of pulling in her arms, pulling back to Konoha.
Maybe he never really was at all.)
"He doesn't deserve you," Ino says.
Sakura closes her eyes against that blue gaze: enough sharpness to rip Sakura to shreds.
Shikamaru snarls an agreement.
They don't get it.
Sasuke is her teammate.
It's not about deserving.
And they should get that, the two of them, what teammates mean. Of all the people Sakura knows, Ino and Shikamaru should get that.
It's not about deserving, it's about the bonds that Konoha tied between them, the way their Village fused their souls under the heat of the Will of Fire. It's about Sasuke and the boy he once was, the boy Sakura knew he could be.
It's not about deserving. It's just about Sakura and these boys she was given without understanding what it meant and no ability to keep them close, to keep them safe.
(They should get it, what teammates mean. And somedays Sakura thinks that they do, and that maybe it's just her who doesn't get it.
Maybe her team is broken.
Maybe it never really was.
(Maybe all it ever was was her dreams strung together with candy floss and her eyes too blurred with tears to see it.))
"This world is too hard, Sakura. It doesn't need your help in breaking you."
Sakura shakes.
Ino pulls her down, where she sobs into the hollow of Ino's throat. Shikamaru's hands trace soothing circles along the length of her back.
Ino murmurs soft nothings and presses kisses to her hairline.
"I know, sweet girl. I know. You care too much, it's okay. We've got you. We're here. You're alright. You'll be alright."
It is absolution to finally cry.
She's spent so long telling herself she doesn't deserve to cry, that she doesn't deserve to grieve.
But oh, she is grieving for what she has lost and what she never had.
(Maybe there is a life where Sasuke is not so broken and he loves her the way she needs to be loved.
Maybe there is a life where they are happy together. Where they are whole.
It is not this life.)
Sakura cries. Shikamaru and Ino hold her through it, until there is nothing left in her, and then they hold her a little bit longer.
Finally, all she is is stillness. After this long night, with all of its highs and lows, she has nothing left to her but peace.
It's not fixed, nothing is fixed, but for a moment, the storm of Sakura's emotions is still.
Sakura presses a kiss to Ino's collarbone in thanks.
Ino pulls her up and kisses her softly on the lips, then scatters kisses across her cheeks, washing away the remnants of her tears.
Something small and scared uncurls in Sakura's ribcage, unfolding at the silent declaration of devotion.
Ino presses a last trail of kisses along her nose, between her eyes, ending in the centre of her forehead. When she pulls away, Ino's face is fierce and soft and beautiful.
Sakura loves her so much, this best friend who would burn the world for her, who loves her even when she is at her lowest, who believes that she is worth something, worth everything.
(There is a life where Ino never looks at Sakura and sees greatness in that small, scared girl.
It is a bleaker one that ends much too soon.)
"Bed?" Shikamaru asks, his voice low and quiet, but Sakura still startles.
She'd forgotten that he was there.
But Shikamaru is there, holding them up, watchful of the night as they lay wrapped in grief and forgiveness.
She loves him for it; his quiet and cold protection, the blood he would spill to keep them safe.
(She worries somedays for the way Shikamaru takes the responsibility for their lives in his hands, for the Village on his shoulders, the way he has since he was thirteen and Konoha was reeling from the loss of so many of its shinobi.
(Somedays she worries his care for her stems from the snarl on his face at Sasuke's selfishness. (Shikamaru never forgave Sasuke for almost losing Chōji.) But then she'll remember the boy who tilted his head at her when Ino shoved this unknown pink haired girl at him and invited her to play a game of shōgi, and was so patient as he taught her how to move the pieces.
He blinked once when Ami and her friends showed up to torment Sakura, Ino late to arrive to school. Blinked and said something so drawling and vicious that Ami fled in tears.))
(They don't understand how she loves Sasuke. She doesn't understand how they don't understand, when what they were born to be—Ino-Shika-Chō—has made them what they are.
But here, wrapped up in them and their fierce, vicious love, she thinks she might.
(She loves Naruto and Sasuke, but she doesn't believe that the loss of her would destroy them, that they would destroy for the loss of her.
And she wants to weep for that, but she doesn't have the tears.))
"Yeah," Ino agrees. "Bed. You're staying here."
It's an order.
Sakura doesn't disagree.
Ino disentangles herself from Sakura and groans as she stands, stretching out the kinks of being squished on the couch for too long.
Sakura goes to follow and squeaks when Shikamaru lifts her.
She wraps her legs around his waist and buries her face in his shoulder instead of complaining. Shikamaru's hands flex under her thighs as he hitches her closer.
They're quiet as they follow Ino to her bedroom.
Sakura feels strangely docile and detached, like the alcohol and her tears and the soft darkness pressing in have sloughed off layers of armour, leaving her unweighted, light enough to float away.
Shikamaru's hands under her and his ribs expanding against her own are an anchor, lest she float away entirely.
(She's so very tired of being strong.)
When they get to the bedroom, Ino is pulling out pyjamas for the three of them.
"For you," she says, tossing a pair of pants for Shikamaru and an oversized top for Sakura onto the bed.
Shikamaru releases his hold on her as Sakura unwinds her legs from around him. It's a long slide down his body.
When her feet are finally on the ground, Ino takes the elbow that Shikamaru is steadying and turns her around.
Sakura goes, and lets Ino guide her out of her clothing.
Shikamaru gently pulls the sleep shirt over her head and Ino helps her get her arms through the sleeves.
Sakura shivers at their touches: soft and intimate and undemanding.
Ino's eyes track the shiver and her hands—smoothing the shirt down Sakura's torso—pause at her hips and tighten. Sakura leans into her when Ino tugs, something caught in her lungs.
Shikamaru brings a hand up to brace her lower back.
Sakura watches Ino's eyes dart down to her mouth, then back up to look at her.
"Sakura?" she asks.
Sakura doesn't understand the question.
"Hmm?"
Ino tilts her head. "I'm going to kiss you now. Unless you don't want me to."
Sakura blinks. "Why?"
(Why should Ino want to kiss her, when Sakura is simply Sakura and not worth it?)
(Why would Sakura ever say no?)
"Because I want to take care of you. Because I think you need taking care of tonight. So, can I kiss you?"
Sakura drops her head back onto Shikamaru's chest to offer her lips up to Ino, her eyes fluttering close.
Ino's hands are brands where they cup Sakura's jaw, but her mouth is benediction.
Sakura opens under her touch, blooming, and Ino sweeps into her, sweeps her away.
Ino kisses her and kisses her and kisses her, until there is nothing left of Sakura but the places Ino has touched.
She whimpers when Ino pulls away, but Shikamaru is there, hovering.
"Sakura?" he breathes.
And Sakura can't answer but she can reach for him, threading her fingers through his hair to pull him down to her.
If Ino is a flood then Shikamaru is wildfire.
Under both of them she is destroyed.
Shikamaru bears her backwards until she blinks and suddenly she is spread across Ino's bed, Shikamaru holding himself over her as he kisses her and kisses her and kissed her.
Ino says something, the words not registering as Sakura is unmade, but Shikamaru rumbles out an agreement, and then he is trailing kisses down her neck, stopping to suck bruises into the skin behind her ear, at the hollow of her throat. When he hits the neckline of the shirt, Sakura almost laughs at the disgruntled sound he makes, except that then Shikamaru is laving her nipple through her shirt with the broad swath of his tongue and she is gasping.
Ino catches her hands when she reaches for him.
"We're going to make you feel good. Do you want that, Sakura? Do you want us?"
Sakura nods, squeezing Ino's hands.
"That's not good enough, Sakura, I need you to use your words."
Shikamaru stops and perches his chin on her sternum to look up at her, to watch her with his dark burning eyes.
Sakura gasps and tries to find the words.
This isn't— This isn't what she expected. She doesn't know how they got here. But she knows that she trusts them, that she loves them, and maybe it isn't the way she thought you should love somebody to trust them with your body, but she has trusted Ino and Shikamaru with more than this, with more than her pleasure, trusted them with her life and heart and her soul. This isn't what she expected, but she wants this, wants this stolen night where they love her and give her back something she didn't know she had lost.
"Please," Sakura finally rasps out. Please, gods, but she wants to be loved.
Ino kisses one palm, then the other. "Good girl. Thank you, Sakura, we're going to make this so good for you."
Sakura nods, desperately. "Please," she says again, the words spilling out of her now that she's managed to speak past the wanting and the grief that chokes her throat. "Please, Ino, please please please. Shika, I want— please. More, I need—"
"We've got you," Ino reassures her. "Just trust us, Sakura. We've got you."
Sakura trusts those blue eyes, so steady on her own. Trusts the hands holding her, their familiar callouses.
"Shika," Ino says, and Shikamaru must hear something in that, because he smiles, a delighted feral thing that Sakura doesn't recognize, and sucks.
Sakura jerks, almost coming off the bed but for the hands holding her hips, the eyes holding her own.
After that it's Shikamaru's mouth on her breasts, bare at some point, though Sakura doesn't remember losing her shirt. It's Ino biting across her stomach, soothing the hurt with her tongue, and then lower still. It's moans falling out of her mouth and words of endearment that make Sakura thrash, her toes curl, shame wrapped in pleasure, because "baby girl" and "sweetheart" and "beautiful" shouldn't break her heart the way they do, shouldn't put her back together.
At some point, Sakura must end up sitting against Shikamaru's chest, his back against the wall, because Ino is saying "Shika, her hands." and Shikamaru is trailing his fingers down her arms until they wrap lightly around her wrists, his form solid and warm underneath her.
"Sakura," he murmurs, a question. "Say the word and I'll let go."
She can't breathe, doesn't have words, and so her fingers slide into the hand signal for "understood".
Shikamaru's fingers flex ever so slightly, and he presses more kisses against her neck in praise.
Ino stares up at them where she's been worrying bruises into the soft skin at the inside of Sakura's thighs. She pins Sakura with her eyes, dares her to look away, and Sakura can't, could never, Ino too beautiful for words as she licks a broad stripe along Sakura's labia majora, up to flick at her clitoris.
Sakura whines, the sound echoing at the back of her throat, and Ino does it again.
She pulls back for a moment to smile wickedly, and then she brings her hand up and Sakura looses herself to sensation, doesn't bother trying to quantify the feelings, just feels.
It's tongue and the slightest edge of teeth and Ino's clever fingers, with Shikamaru's grip around her wrists an anchor in the storm as Sakura feels herself coil tighter and tighter, pleasure running electric through her veins. Her head tosses against Shikamaru's chest as she fights whatever it is that is building in her, something sharp and warm and foreign and so, so good.
"That's it, you're doing so good beautiful," Shikamaru tells her. He's shifted both wrists to one hand, his other tracing soothing lines along her sides.
Sakura could pull away, but she lets him hold her still. She moans, caught between falling over the edge Ino is pushing her towards and running away.
She could pull away or say stop or freeze, and they would let her run.
But she doesn't.
Sakura shudders, and lets herself feel, lets herself writhe and chase that unknown peak.
"That's it, there you go."
"I can't," Sakura sobs, "I can't, I can't. I don't—" She doesn't know how to let go, and it hurts, this wanting and not having.
"Shh, sweetheart," Shikamaru's croons in her ear. The long sweeping circles he's drawing across her ribs are a soft counterpart to Ino's tongue on her clit.
Sakura shakes her head, her damp hair catching on the planes of his chest. "I can't."
"Yes, you can," Shikamaru's insists, and Ino punctuates his reassurance with a particularly vicious twist of her fingers.
Unthinking, Sakura's hips buck, seeking more, seeking to get away, she doesn't know. It's too much and not enough and everything.
Shikamaru's hand, the one not holding her wrists pinned, slips down to press hot and heavy on her stomach, just above her mons, forcing her hips to still.
Ino does it again, three fingers deep, scissoring as she presses in further.
Sakura yelps and her thighs spasm, tightening around Ino's golden head even as she tries to pull away.
Ino's gaze flashes up, blue eyes trapping Sakura, washing away the last of the self-doubt and the fear. Ino's gaze on her makes Sakura feel invincible.
Again, she presses in, and Shikamaru holds her steady, holds her still as she shakes.
"Ino," Sakura mumbles, "fuck, I don't— please—"
Ino laughs, and the sound vibrates through Sakura.
She moans, teetering on a precipice.
"Come for us, Sakura," Shikamaru orders.
Ino twists her fingers and presses her tongue flat against Sakura's clit.
Sakura falls.
And all there is is light.
Ino and Shikamaru ease her through it, soft touches and words, until Sakura is an exhausted, sated mess.
She watches with half-closed eyes, curled on her side, her chin perched on a hand, as Ino rides Shikamaru.
They're gorgeous to watch: the long golden fall of Ino's hair catching what little light echoes through the room; Shikamaru's hands dwarfing Ino's waist; the stretch of Shikamaru's neck as his head drops back and the bruises Ino puts there; the way they kiss like devouring, like two parts of a whole.
Sakura tucks away the sounds they make somewhere safe for her to keep.
After, when they've cleaned up and Ino's made them all drink a glass of water and they're tumbled together under the covers, falling asleep, Sakura murmurs "thank you."
"Oh, Sakura," Ino laughs, and kisses her chin. "No. No thanks needed. Not for that. That was a pleasure."
Shikamaru makes a sleepy sound of agreement and buries his face in the back of Sakura's neck.
They fall asleep surrounding her, but Sakura clings to wakefulness. She doesn't want to fall into dreams and wake to the end of this.
Not yet.
She lets Ino and Shikamaru wrap around her, keeping her safe, for just a little while longer.
(Shinobi live short and painful lives. They take what they can, when they can.)
When dawn breaks, this will be just one more thing they've shared in the night.
Sakura doesn't love them the way she thought you needed to love a person to share this.
But she loves them.
And more than that, they love her.
(They'd burn the world for her, but most of all, they'll hold her tight.
She doesn't ever want the world to burn for her, but oh, does Sakura want to be loved, be wanted.
Hands curl against the bruises they've left on her hipbones.
It is enough, for now.
(She is enough.
Maybe one day she'll believe it.))
