leave/believe; beholden/golden

rating: t
genre: friendship/romance
pairings: inosaku
POV: Sakura
warnings: mild swearing
prompt: for Naruto Femslash Week 2017, Day 2: First Kiss/Training Sessions
word count: 1,211

i.

"Really?" Ino demands, her hair falling in her face as she sits up abruptly. She sweeps it gracefully behind her ear, scowling when her fingers tangle at the last moment. "You seriously have never kissed anyone?"

"What?" Sakura asks, crossing her arms in front of her. "It's not a big deal. I just… haven't found the right person is all."

Ino gets her hair sorted and fully rights herself, shifting to face Sakura directly.

"Sakura," she sighs something worn and exasperated and sad in her voice, "how long are you going to wait for Sasuke?"

Sakura tightens her arms further, pulling her knees up to her chest. She looks away from Ino's steady gaze, letting her bangs slip to shield her eyes.

"I'm not—"

"Yes," Ino cuts her off, cutting her, "don't even try to lie to me, Haruno Sakura. I'll believe you when you can look me in the eye and say that without flinching."

Sakura scowls and pushes her hair roughly out of her face again, turning back to glare at Ino.

"I'm not waiting for Sasuke-kun," she declares.

The claim is cracked right down the middle, Sakura's voice shattering along the fault lines.

The lie falls heavy between them, a vicious thing dripping viscera.

"Right," Ino drawls back. "You sounded really firm about that."

Sakura sniffles and rubs her hand roughly across her mouth, scrubbing at the sob trapped between her teeth.

"Ah, fuck," Ino sighs, and crawls across the bed to press her thigh against Sakura's and wrap an arm around Sakura's shoulders to pull her into the curve of Ino's body. "Don't cry."

"I'm not crying," Sakura spits through the tears welling at the back of her throat.

Ino sighs again, and rests her cheek against Sakura's hair.

They sit quietly for a long moment as Sakura struggles with the heavy grief aching in her breastbone.

"I know they're your team, Sakura, but you need to stop waiting on those boys. They might never come home."

"Naruto promised," Sakura manages passed the blades in her lungs.

The words are worn through, shot with holes, but still Sakura wraps herself in their comfortable embrace: a worry stone she comes back to always.

(One day, she fears the words will fall to pieces between her fingers and she will have nothing left to buffer her from the long cold nights when the wolves howl and she is all alone.)

"I know he did," Ino says.

It doesn't sound like an agreement.

The quiet settles around them again.

Sakura leans further into the firmament of Ino's embrace.

"I know—" Sakura starts, "I know it wouldn't be—I know it isn't fair—but it feels like it'd be a betrayal, to kiss someone else when they're both still so far away."

(It feels like betrayal to grow up without them; Naruto and Sasuke-kun eternally babyfaced boys with too much weighing heavy on their slim shoulders in her memories.)

(She doesn't dare let herself consider that maybe there is nothing left for her to betray.)

"You deserve to be happy," Ino says. "They'd want you to be happy. And if they didn't, they wouldn't deserve you."

Sakura doesn't argue, too raw for words.

"Here," Ino says, taking Sakura's chin in her hand.

Sakura doesn't resist as Ino tilts her head back, letting the weight of it fall into the waiting palm of Ino's other hand.

"Ino?" Sakura asks, her eyes settling on Ino's lips.

A pink tongue darts out.

"Let me?" It's barely louder than the rasp of silk against silk in the silent room.

Sakura nods, letting her lashes flutter shut.

It's startling, the first dry brush of warmth, then the second, then that pink tongue sweeping across Sakura's lower lip.

Sakura opens, blossoming—as she always does—at Ino's touch.

It's soft and slow and Ino licks the taste of grief from Sakura's mouth.

Finally, after an age, Ino pulls away, dropping quick kisses to the corner of Sakura's lips, her chin, her cheekbone.

"There," Ino says, her voice honeyed sunlight.

Sakura's hands are twisted viciously in Ino's hair.

"They can't complain. You were mine first."

The way Ino says it, possession curled around her tongue, makes Sakura shiver.

Sakura swallows and—

They don't talk about it.

ii.

Naruto comes home.

Then, even if they wanted to talk about it, Sakura can barely hear for the war drums echoing in her bones and all she can do is catch blue eyes in a crowd before she is rushing, rushing, the future rushing forward, sweeping them away.

iii.

"I'm beat," Sakura declares as she collapses down next to Ino on the grass.

Further into the clearing, away from the tree line where Ino and Sakura are sprawled in the shade, Hinata and Tenten are squaring up while Lee and Naruto cheer from the sidelines. Behind the boys, Shikamaru chats with Chōji and Sai while Shino mocks a sulking Kiba.

"Are you going to fix Kiba's nose?" Ino asks.

Sakura sniffs. "It's only a little broken. He should have shifted left, not right; I could have shattered his whole face if I was a little less careful. Anyways, he's been dodging his physical, and this way he has to go to the hospital."

Ino stares at Sakura's smile, filled with too many teeth, as she stares Kiba down across the clearing.

Ino laughs when Kiba looks away first, his head tilting back to bare his throat ever so slightly as he turns away.

Sakura's grin widens and then she throws herself backwards to drop her head against Ino's thigh.

Ino cards her fingers through Sakura's hair and Sakura hums, letting the rhythmic stroking and the warmth of the afternoon lull her to sleep.

"Sakura," Ino croons.

A long finger trails down the bridge of her nose. Sakura swats at it.

"Time to wake up, sleepy head."

Sakura comes to slowly.

She's swathed in a curtain of gold, Ino's face hanging over her.

Still half-asleep, Sakura reaches up a hand, thumb sliding along Ino's jaw bone, her palm cupping her cheek.

"Hey," Sakura smiles, thumb rubbing gently at the soft patch of skin at the hinge of Ino's jaw.

"Hey," Ino smiles back, and turns to press a kiss to Sakura's palm. "It's starting to get dark, we should go."

Ino's pulse is steady under Sakura's touch, but the brush of Ino's lips against the callouses along the heel of her hand has the breath catching in Sakura's lungs.

Behind Ino's head and beyond the curtain of her hair shielding them from the world, the sky is bleeding to pinks and purples.

"Ino," Sakura sighs.

"Sakura," Ino says back, only mildly mocking.

Sakura licks her lips.

She almost swears Ino's gaze follows the path of her tongue.

"You're beautiful," Sakura tells Ino, the words punched out of her by the way Ino is lit up with light, the words spilling out of her after being dammed behind her teeth for so long.

Ino smiles wider, smiles softer.

"Let me?" Ino asks, an echo of another time, another life.

Sakura nods, and leans up to meet her.

Dusk blooms around them.

Ino presses honeyed kisses to Sakura's lips, and all is golden light and happiness steeped into her bones.