A/N: Happy server gift exchange, Riley! Sorry this was out super close to the deadline, I've been in a bit of a writing rut lately and was struggling HARD even though I've had the concept for this since before the exchange was even announced. This is my first time writing for inosaku, too, so I hope it passes muster lol! Happy holidays!
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Pokemon.
'Twas the 24-hour call shift, when all through the halls;
Not a resident was stirring - until the 3AM page for paracetamol.
The Patagucci was hung on the doorways with care;
In the hopes to catch-
"Do you think I can just get away with saying the word or do I have to find a mirror and, like, Bloody Mary it?"
Gotcha.
"Just say it! Fuck, man, hurry up. It's almost midnight and it's a full moon on a Friday. Lunacy is in our favour."
"I dunno, I have a bad feeling about this…"
"Say it or we won't be able to finish our practical training and the last thing we need is to soap and scramble."
"Fuck, fine: it sure is quiet tonight."
"And what the hell are you two doing here?"
It takes every ounce of self-control to keep her Angry Face in place as the two med students huddled behind a biohazardous waste disposal container try and wrangle their souls back into their bodies. The one who said The Word - a short girl she thinks is currently doing her ER rotation under her - clutches her chest so tightly that Sakura's briefly concerned she might actually rip out her own heart.
"D-D-Dr Haruno!" she stutters, "I didn't - we were just-"
"Lost," the boy next to her pipes up. Sakura knows he's definitely doing his ER rotation under her because she caught him trying to burp an open pneumothorax with a defibrillator pad the other day.
"I can see that," she says, crossing her arms over her chest and eyeing them sternly. "Med students are not allowed in this area. I'm also going to pretend I didn't hear you two say that word just to finish up some procedure checkboxes. Soap and scramble is going to be the least of your concerns if Dr Senju finds out."
The both of them somehow manage to grow even paler than the tiles.
"Dr Senju's on call tonight, too?" the girl squeaks, punching the boy's arm to punctuate each word. "I told you this was a bad idea! Shit, let's go!"
Sakura watches them dart down the hall fondly, chuckling to herself as she goes to her on-call room for the night. While she would sooner down an entire barrel of moonshine and perform brain surgery on herself than ever relive med school, it's hard to deny that she misses certain aspects of it.
Mostly the free time. God, she definitely misses the free time. Had she known how little she would get during residency, she'd never have complained as much as she did.
Sakura flops on the stiff bed and drops her pager and lanyard on top of the patient charts on the side table. Although one can never be too sure, her gut says tonight is going to be nice and mundane.
That could just be because I actually ate something other than leftover ramen today...look at me being all grown.
Aside from a few videos from Naruto of his fox-cat-demon-thing destroying his new sofa, and a text from Sasuke asking if he should change the colour scheme of his PowerPoint for next week, her phone is dryer than her hands. She rubs her fingers together, shuddering at the sound, and vows to splurge on the most expensive hand cream on the market.
Or force Shiranui to put his dermatology skills to good use and prescribe her something borderline illicit.
12:17...I should sleep. I need the sleep. Just gotta close my eyes and…
"Ah, fuck it," she grumbles, unlocking her phone and tapping open an app. She waits patiently for the screen to load, dismisses two pop-up screens, and goes still.
SNICKERDOODLE was knocked out of the Gym! +5 coins.
"What the hell!" she shrieks.
Her neighbour bangs on the wall. "Haruno! Shut the fuck up!"
"You shut the fuck up, Shisui! Tsunade-shishou's gonna be pissed if you break the wall again!"
Turning back to Pokemon Go, Sakura revives her Metang (shiny and equipped with Meteor Mash, eat that) and taps on the now yellow Gym so furiously it's a miracle her screen doesn't shatter. There's only one Pokemon there: a 9CP Magikarp.
Don't tell me it's owned by...motherfucker!
Of the four hospitals in the Senju network that Sakura rotates through, Konoha General somehow only has one fucking Gym for the entire hospital. Mokuton has eight and it's barely even half the size of this one.
(Rest in peace to her Weavile who's been stuck in the cafeteria Gym for over 500 days now.)
Point is, with one Gym for one hospital and all its staff and patients, keeping a stronghold long enough to reap the maximum daily coins is effectively a lost cause, especially when the game is designed to make communicating with other players impossible. Sakura'd spent months booting players out of the Gym when they overtook too quickly, and eventually, the regulars got the hint: wait your fucking turn. They were on a schedule: Mystic, Valor, Instinct, repeat.
Until dazzlinggleam1n0 and her fucking stupid self decided to make Valor hours 25/8.
"If I ever find out who you are, it's game fucking over," Sakura hisses, making quick work of kicking out the Magikarp and putting Snickerdoodle back in. "I don't care if you're as pretty as your avatar, I will fuck up your face."
Silently apologizing to the Mystic players for breaking order, Sakura puts her phone down and shuts her eyes with a soft sigh. Thankfully it's only 12:30, meaning there's 8 hours until she is home fucking free.
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
Bang. "Mass cas page, Haruno! Let's rock'n'roll, baby!"
"Fuck you, Shisui!"
"...budget cut was patently absurd considering…"
Reshiram? I already lucked out and got a four-star, but should I spend my remote pass trying to get a shiny?
"...merger would benefit both parties…"
Giratina...Giratina...Giratina again...do these people not have any other raid spawns to put up?
"...we can allocate more resources - Sakura, are you listening?"
Oh! Kyurem! Haven't caught that yet, okay, drop the friend code and wait.
"Sakura!"
"Huh? What? Oh, yeah, I heard you," she lies, discreetly checking her phone to make sure the friend request went through the app.
Across the boardroom table, Sasuke leans back in his seat with a heavy sigh. "I know this is all terrifically boring to listen to, but the merger between the Senju and Uchiha networks is big. I'd appreciate it if you paid attention instead of playing that stupid game."
"How's your shiny Deino, Sasuke?" Sakura asks slyly. The tips of his ears go red, and he loosens his tie, muttering, "We're off topic."
"Uh-huh."
"It's a shundo."
"Nice!"
"Obviously. Anyway, as the representative for the Senju network - and my best friend - I'd like your input on the presentation and five-year plan as it stands right now," Sasuke says, gesturing to her laptop. "I sent the PowerPoint to you and the room is booked for the next two hours, so take your time. I'll be back after lunch."
The bar on the lower right corner of the screen pings orange, and Sakura mentally pumps her fist, accepting the invite. She activates one of her Lucky Eggs and a Stardust, and, because there's still over a hundred seconds left on the countdown, hazards a glance at Sasuke as he packs up.
"Got a hot date?"
"Worse," he deadpans, "My cousins."
"If Shisui is missing a limb, it wasn't me."
"If Shisui's missing a limb, he deserves it. Anyway, see you around - and stop raiding during work, what if you get paged?" he chides gently, ruffling her hair on his way out.
Sakura flips him the bird.
Ah, let's see what the breakdown is...if there's more Valor players then I get a bonus premiere ball in the end. Valor, Valor, Mystic - oh, hey, that's Genma, nice. Mystic, Valor...Instinct?
"That's a surprise, there's never any Instinct players here for five-star raids," she says aloud. Curiousity piqued, Sakura examines the character avatar carefully and freezes.
"Oh my God, it's her!" she shouts, "Seriously? Wait, what's her name-!"
Before she can lunge for her laptop to check the raid request post for dazzlinggleam1n0's details, the raid begins and Sakura has no choice but to pray it's still up by the time she's done. Her fingers shake so much that she can barely charge her moves in time, but between fifteen players, it takes just under a minute to finish off the Kyurem and an additional two for her to catch it with an excellent curveball.
Sakura forgoes checking the stats in favour for furiously scrolling through the feed for her PoGo Raids group in the hopes of finding the post. Her heart drops along with her head when nothing turns up; like 95% of people in the group, the original poster is likely the sort to delete their post after finishing a raid to avoid clogging up the page. Which is great and all, but the nature of the game means a) she can't add dazzlinggleam1n0 as a friend by username and b) it's against the Page rules to ask for specific player information.
Sakura pauses. Would it be creepy to send her a friend invite out of the blue? Unlike her, Sakura doesn't have the option of making her avatar lifelike - naturally pink hair does, in fact, have its downsides, the latest of which includes not having a recognizable avatar. But if she's in this raid group then she's probably local, and if she takes over the Gym as often as she does then she probably also works here, so could it be seen as just a...friendly coworker reaching out?
"I hate my life," she moans, reaching for her phone to check on her Kyurem.
"A nundo? Really? Fuck! My! Life!"
"You should just download one of the raiding apps," Shisui advises one day, "Raid groups are so two-thousand and late."
Sakura flicks a ripped glove at his forehead. "Oh? And which one do you suggest, Dr Uchiha? I mean Dr Uchiha. Not the other Dr Uchiha. Or the other-"
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it off. It's funny until you get stuck on a page loop for six hours. I'm an ortho bro, does it look like I know what to do for renal failure? That's an Obito problem." Shisui wrinkles his nose. "And to answer your question, I don't on account of having enough cousins to max out a lobby. But I know whatsherface from the NICU uses...here, I'll just download it for you. Ew, is that Naruto's pet chimera on your lockscreen?"
"Hey, be nice! Kurama's a cutie. You should see that trash panda thing Gaara has."
Shisui shudders, muttering something about rabid raccoons as he downloads the app for her. He hands it over just as his pager dings, cackling maniacally when he checks it.
"Itachi owes me fifty, I told him I'd get an open femur break today! Yo, Sakura, I'll let you figure the app on your own, I gotta get!"
"Have fun, Bob the Builder," she calls after him, rolling her eyes. Ortho bros.
The app is genius, and because Sakura is a hard-working girlboss with a steady income and just a little under a quarter million left to pay back in student loans, she decides to indulge in a pack of three remote passes to try the app out. Deciding to try her luck with one of the Mega Bosses instead of Kyurem - for the tenth time - she joins the wait room for Lopunny.
"Two thousand - fuck, I hope I don't get a-" She snaps her mouth shut abruptly, refusing to put the words out there. Her luck has been stretched enough with those med students invoking The Q Word last week. No need to test the Hospital Gods by begging for reprieve.
Ah, whatever, I'll get some paperwork out of the way…
The paperwork takes twice as long to get through because she keeps pausing to check her spot in line, but Sakura eventually loses herself to the comfortable, boring repetition of charting and notes. She's so absorbed in her own thoughts she barely notices her phone buzz an hour later.
"Might wanna check that," somebody says from the opposite corner of the room.
"Huh? Oh, shit, thanks."
"No problem, girlfriend."
Sakura quickly adds the host as a friend, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes while waiting for the invite to come through. Her vision is so blurry she needs to bring the phone right up to her nose just to be able to make out the countdown numbers.
Fuck it, I'm gonna ask Sasuke if his mom still has an opening for LASIK.
With six players on board, the Lopunny is defeated in record time and thankfully doesn't require a Golden Razz to be caught. Sakura revives her Pokemon, tosses out the Charged TMs, and hesitates over the lone Gift in her inventory. Shit, she'd totally forgotten to send them out today. Sasuke'll be pissed she broke their streak.
But custom dictates she send out a gift to the raid host as a thank you and she only has the one...decisions, decisions…
Sasuke will live. And if he doesn't, then she doesn't have to sit through another hour of him waffling between fuschia and off-cyan for his presentation background, so it's no skin off her back.
"Alright, let's see...all the way to the bottom, right? Yeah...oh, wait, hang - wait." Her jaw drops. There's no way. No way.
And yet, dazzlinggleam1n0 is now her good friend.
Sakura flushes, suddenly nervous. What sticker should she choose? Her normal move is the bowing Pikachu shouting thank you, but does that come off as too desperate? Plus, this is dazzlinggleam1n0. Gym Thief. Annoyingly pretty blonde avatar. 9CP Magikarp from hell.
Maybe the Sexy Treecko?
"Think, Sakura, think," she mumbles, biting on a hang-nail until it bleeds. "Use that juicy brain of yours...oh, wait!" She still has a few limited edition holiday run stickers from last year. She always tries to save at least one of each kind just for posterity, but something tells her to add her favourite Meloetta sticker to the Gift and hit send.
"Hope you enjoy the peace offering, bitch," she says fondly, "Just don't take over my Gym tonight."
(She doesn't take over the Gym - at least not when Valor is in. Mystic gets no such mercy, much to Sasuke's consternation.)
"Does she not travel anywhere?" Sakura says in disbelief. "Her Musharna is her best buddy so I know she gets Gifts from distant stops, too."
"Sakura, the board meeting is in twenty minutes," Sasuke stresses, reaching up to run a hand through his hair and stopping just short of his bangs.
"Mikoto-san styled it this morning, huh."
"Yes, but I must be as presentable as possible going into this. As the future CFO of the Uchiha Corporation-"
"She's on the board today, huh."
Sasuke wilts a little. "Yes."
Sakura pats him on the shoulder sympathetically. Tuning out his hemming and hawing over how best to introduce himself, she considers the Gift at hand curiously. Dazzlinggleam1n0 (or, as she's been saved under, The Cute Bitch) only ever seems to send Gifts from the PokeStop by the multicoloured art installation out by the East end. While not the furthest Stop in the hospital, it's a bit out of the way to have such a routine stock of Gifts from, which means she works in that area.
Except Sakura has never stepped foot outside of the North and West ends on account of having zero need to.
"Hey, Sasuke, what's in the East end of the hospital? By the statue that Hinata-san made and gifted to us."
"IT, mostly." His eyes widen in alarm. "Oh, no, I should've allocated some slides for art projects and donations."
Sensing an impending Sasuke Freakout and cursing the fact that Naruto's off on a diplomatic visit to Suna and unable to deal with it, Sakura scrapes together the tattered remains of her sympathetic bleeding heart to talk him down.
"Sasuke, there are already a hundred and thirty-five slides. I don't think anybody there really cares about art or the humanities considering they're corporate overlords."
"I resent the implication that I cannot appreciate fine art and reap in record profits, Dr Haruno," Mikoto Uchiha comments dryly, "But I have to concur. Sasuke, please cut the number of slides down to at least two-thirds of that. Brevity is the soul of wit."
"Dr Uchiha," Sakura greets with a nod.
Mikoto exhales tiredly. "Just Mikoto will do, Sakura-chan. There are far too many Dr Uchiha's in this building."
"But kaa-san, the meeting-"
"Has been delayed by about an hour," Mikoto cuts him off, "Apparently somebody got a little too rowdy in the room yesterday and broke the projector. One of the IT specialists has been called for."
Sakura and Sasuke exchange A Look before chorusing, "Shisui."
"Shockingly, no," Mikoto says, "Itachi."
"Nii-san?" Sasuke exclaims, "There has to be a mistake, there is no way nii-san would do something so...so...childish."
"Security camera confirms it." An angel pops her head out of the conference room. Sakura blinks twice to make sure she's not hallucinating because people this pretty simply do not exist outside of manhwa's.
"Deepfake," Sasuke snaps.
The Angel shrugs, tucking a strand of sun-spun hair behind her ear so Sakura can see those sea-foam green eyes in all their sparkling glory.
"Your brother also confirms it."
Sasuke stares blankly until Mikoto grabs his arm and steers him away. "Please send a message when you've finished. Thank you for your hard work!"
"Not a problem!" The Angel waves them off. Turning to Sakura, she winks. "You have an hour or two to kill, girlfriend. I'd suggest getting some grub."
With you? almost slips out of her mouth. Biting her tongue, Sakura making a vague noise she hopes passes for agreement.
Shit. How are people this pretty? How do people function when looking at people this pretty? The last time she'd been this starstruck was...never.
"I suggest the little coffee truck outside the east end entrance," she tells her, grinning slyly, "They have got the most dazzling latte art and bagels."
Eventually, Sakura finds her way to the east end. She has to stop and ask for directions more than once, but by some stroke of luck, she bumps into both of the med students from last Friday who offer to lead the way.
"The latte art truck doesn't open for another twenty minutes," the girl informs her, "But honestly, totally worth the wait. The caffeine content is borderline illegal."
"If you're really in a hurry and hungry, though, I suggest that one over there." Pneumothorax Boy points to a taco truck by the stop sign down the street. "Their serving sizes are way bigger than the prices suggest."
"I think I'll wait," Sakura says, "Thank you for helping me out."
"I could buy you-"
"This won't change what I write down on your performance review at the end of your rotation," Sakura interjects, raising her brow. Pneumothorax Boy deflates, rubbing the back of his head. "Yeah, I had that coming."
"Oi, let's go, I think I see Kairi with Dr Uchiha over there!"
"Wait, ICU Dr Uchiha? Or Opthalmology Dr Uchiha?"
"Ortho Dr Uchiha! God, Raizen, get it together, how do you not recognize our future attending this far away?"
"Fuck off, Chihaya, with our Step scores? Hell no. Anyway, see ya round, Dr Haruno!" Raizen (she will definitely need to remember that name for performance reviews - and to warn Shisui) shoots her a quick salute and hurries off after Chihaya. Sakura wiggles her fingers in goodbye, and idly taps open Pokemon Go to kill some time until the stall opens.
"Alright, what sticker…" she murmurs, hesitating her thumb over the options. "More importantly, which stop should I send the Gift from…"
Sending it from the art installation seems a bit tongue in cheek, so she's definitely going to do that. The sticker, on the other hand…
Sakura's only a little embarrassed to admit she splurged some coins in-game to buy special stickers just to send to The Cute Bitch. Sexy Treecko and Tail Wag Pikachu can only convey so much, and everything else is just so boring. Not for the first time since this weird affair started, she wishes there were stickers that said I Wanna Meet You instead of Hi! or You Seem Fun in lieu of Wow!
Anything to start a conversation.
"I'd send that one if I were you."
Sakura nearly jumps out of her skin when The Angel descends on her, taking a seat so close that she can feel the warmth radiating off her.
"I'm Ino, by the way," she says, leaning over to tap the Chimchar sticker and send the Gift.
"Sakura," she croaks out after a second. "Dr Haruno. But you can call me Sakura."
"Ino, but you can call me…" Ino peers at the screen and laughs. "Well, that's fair enough. Have you been waiting long, Dr Sakura Haruno?"
"Not really. The latte truck is still closed for a few minutes."
"I know."
Sakura's eyes narrow suspiciously. "Hey, I thought you were fixing the projector and it was going to take an hour."
"Oh, that?" Ino waves a dismissive hand. "Yeah, I lied."
"So Itachi didn't do it?"
"Oh, no, he totally did, but there's no way that projector was going to get replaced and set up in an hour. I still have to order a replacement," Ino confides, her breath tickling Sakura's jaw. She hopes to god her flush can be explained away by the cold and not the super cute girl next to her.
"So you lied because…?"
"Well, one, Dr Uchiha - eye doctor, not the other fifteen billion - looked like she needed to give Sasuke a talking to, and two…" Ino grins, tapping Sakura on the nose. "This way, you and I have about forty minutes to kill. There's a two-star Eevee raid in ten. I think between your Metang and my Gyarados, we have this in the bag."
Sakura short-circuits. "Huh?"
"If you have higher stats or a shiny, the latte is my treat, and vice versa," Ino announces, getting to her feet and stretching lazily.
"Huh?"
"C'mon, drharun00," she teases, "Seriously, girlfriend, you have got to be more subtle with the naming. All your socials are the same!"
"Wait, you planned this?" she yelps, crossing her arms over her chest defensively. "And I was blanking out when the app first dropped okay? Sasuke and Naruto already had their names and I was gonna miss out on the hunt - whatever, besides the point! You planned this!"
"The coffee date? Sure. As the resident IT expert, I have a duty to protect the privacy of all the doctors under my care," Ino replies earnestly, blinking a little too innocently. "So I thought this would be a great time to meet up and do that. And tomorrow, too. Maybe the day after. My office is right there." She points to the corner office on one of the upper floors. "So I'm free whenever."
"Okay," Sakura blurts out, grasping for the lightning in the bottle. "Okay, cool. I work nights, mostly. So we could...get twinning Umbreon's if we get our - their friendship high enough. So we have to meet up to battle with them. A lot."
"Oh, totally. We can even meet up outside of work, too. Strictly for Pokemon purposes." Ino bobs her head, holding out her hand. "Shall we, Dr Haruno?"
"I still don't forgive you for kicking me out of the Gym five minutes after taking over," she warns, accepting her hand up. Ino doesn't let go. Instead, she tugs her along beside her whistling a jaunty tune.
"Oh, I was doing that to piss off Dr Uchiha The Ortho Bro for breaking the EMR last month. Then I saw you reaming him out for it while raiding and just knew I had to catch you to see for myself."
"See what?" Sakura's breath stops when Ino flashes her a pearly white smile.
"If you can keep up with me - I think you can, girlfriend."
A/N: if I had a nickle for every time I wrote a meet cute surrounding Pokemon Go I would have two nickles which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
(re: Portals to Hell, from my FT days before the game even DROPPED I was running on leaks and a prayer uwu. Anyway.)
Hope you enjoyed!
-eien