20. things you said that i wasn't meant to hear

rating: t+
genre: angst & romance
pairings: inosaku
POV: Sakura
other notes: mini fic prompt fill
word count: 1,388

Ino's never been afraid to speak her mind.

Six years old and wielding words like weapons: the shining knight to Sakura's damsel.

Ino's never been afraid to speak plain, to speak truth, to take Sakura by the back of the neck and make her look in the mirror, make her stop hiding from herself.

Sakura's never known Ino to hide words under her tongue that weren't expertly calibrated to be released at a later date in a perfect cascade of destruction, plans falling perfectly into motion.

Of the two of them, Sakura's ever been the liar, too scared to see the world (and herself) in all its glory and ruin.

Sakura was happy with her cardboard dollhouses and gilded dreams.

Ino would rather peel herself out of her skin than live a lie.

And yet.

.

.

.

i.

"Hey, Sakura," Ino drawls, holding each vowel in her mouth so long that it loses meaning.

"Hey, Ino." Sakura smoothes the hair out of Ino's face to better see her, but it's mostly a lost cause for the glazed eyes and the way Ino's cheek is smushed against Sakura's shoulder, turning her expressions hazy, like watercolours blurring

"'re be-ou-ti-ful. 'd j' know? Mhmm. So…" Ino raises a hand and rests it clumsily on Sakura's cheek. "You shoul' know."

And Ino's always been insistent with compliments, saying them with as much blunt truth as her insults, but this is—

Sakura doesn't know, but there's something too much in the slurred words. There's something too much swimming in Ino's eyes.

ii.

"She isn't a thing you can just pick up when it's convenient!"

Sakura had almost missed them, they've both got their chakra tamped so far down, but Ino's furious hiss slithers up her spine and wraps around her throat.

Sakura freezes.

"Don't you shrug me off, Uchiha," Ino continues. "I know you think you're better than the rest of us, but if you hurt her, I will ruin you."

Sasuke makes a dismissive sound, but it's abruptly cuts off.

Sakura is frozen.

She should stop this.

They could hurt each other.

But she needs—

Sakura doesn't know what she needs.

"I'm not scared of your fancy eyes," Ino sneers. "You think you can hurt me with those? I'll have you jabbering, mindless, at my feet before you've even finished the thought. Hurt Sakura, and I'll make sure that the Uchiha die forever."

Sakura runs before they notice her.

She should be angry at Ino for threatening Sasuke; Sakura isn't something that needs protecting.

But—

She can picture Sasuke's haughty disdain perfectly.

And he never even promised not to hurt her.

(She wonders if it's too much to ask of him, given their history.)

iii.

As Sakura stands frozen in the doorway, she thinks that she really needs to stop this habit of happening upon Ino when she's got people pressed up against walls.

There's a sharp curve of a woman pressing up into Ino's firm grip, her hands pulling Ino's perfect hair into artful disarray.

Ino's hand is lost amidst the folds of clothing, but the woman is panting and Ino is murmuring into her cheek, "oh, babe, just like that, you're so good, you feel so good, c'mon c'mon," all hot praise and a slash of violent lipstick.

Sakura scrambles backwards and back into the bar, ensuring that the door closes behind her without a sound.

She—

Sakura hadn't known Ino was into women.

She—

Why isn't that something she already knows?

iv.

"Maybe I'm just destined for misery," Sakura laughs.

It's not a very nice laugh.

Ino scowls down at her.

From her blanket handle on Ino's bed, Sakura scowls back.

"I just broke off my engagement to the boy of my dreams. I'm allowed to be bitter."

"Stop fucking wallowing. You're better off. Sasuke is a selfish little boy who never grew up. He'd have asked you to destroy yourself and you would have done it."

Sakura looks away.

Ino, as always, doesn't. But she does sigh. "Fine," Ino continues, her voice lacking the same sharp edges. "You can wallow for tonight. But don't let him ruin you this way, too. You deserve better, Sakura."

Ino says it.

It must be true.

Even so, Sakura wraps herself tighter in blankets and shies away from it, as always.

It hurts to much, to admit that her dreams were nothing so much as cobwebs and the aftertaste of bitter almonds.

"No one deserves you," Ino murmurs, much later, her fingers in Sakura's hair having lulled her mostly to sleep, their breathing even and deep. "Least of all selfish creatures likes Sasuke and me."

v.

"Why won't you just tell me what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," Ino yells back, blue eyes too close.

Sakura's gaze glances down to Ino's mouth, and away.

"Stop lying to me!"

"Stop lying to yourself!"

Sakura wants to shake her.

Sakura wants to hit her.

Sakura wants to bloody her.

Sakura wants to put marks all over her.

Sakura wants to make Ino hers.

She clenches her hands tight enough to make her palms bleed for the way that her fingernails are slicing a them, instead.

She can't even remember what they're fighting about.

"How am I lying, Ino?"

"Because," Ino spits, and she tries to shove Sakura with both hands, but Sakura just plants her feet and exerts a bit of chakra and doesn't move. "Because you keep pretending that you don't know I'm in love with you, and it's breaking my heart."

Before today, Sakura would have thought she would win a footrace with Ino.

She was wrong.

She should have accounted for the fact that Ino is a terrible cheat.

.

.

.

Amongst her varied skill set, Sakura can set a mean trap.

Or, well, she can go sit forlornly in Chōji's kitchen, raiding his snack stashes, until Chōji's soft heart and Shikamaru's inability to put up with Ino's dramatics kick in, and they arrange to make sure Ino ends up in the same room with her.

Which, Sakura would argue, is setting a trap. Just not in the traditional shinobi sense.

Kakashi-sensei would be proud of her, arranging for her friends to do the hard work for her.

Ino bounces off the window when she tries to bolt through it.

Sakura loves seals.

"I'm going to skin Naruto alive and feed him to his toads," Ino spits.

Sakura sniffs. "I don't think the toad summons go for red meat, actually."

Ino doesn't turn around. "There's a first time for everything. And I can be persuasive."

"I know," Sakura says. "Which is why I'm so surprised you didn't, oh I don't know, try to seduce me?"

Ino's back stiffens and the room goes cold.

"Don't," she says: glass and razor blades and bitter coffee grounds. "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't do this, Sakura. Don't think that. I would never— you're my best friend."

Sakura is stunned for a moment, caught off guard by the broken crack right through Ino's voice.

Oh.

Oh no.

Oh, Ino.

"You're my best friend," Sakura echoes back. "You should have told me."

At some point, she's stood to stand at Ino's back, a hand hovering over the panicked rounding of her shoulders.

"Ino, you should have said something."

"And make you pity me?" Ino whirls, eyes blazing. "Make you feel guilty? Make you feel like you owed me? I'm not Sasuke, Sakura, I wouldn't trick you into something you didn't want but didn't know how to refuse."

She's a livewire. She's a lightning storm.

Sakura, unflinchingly, places a hand on Ino's cheek.

"Ino," she smiles, soft and fond. "When have I ever not known how to fight you?"

Ino sobs.

Sakura catches her as she sags.

They fall together, to their knees.

"You should have told me," Sakura says, "so that I could have said it back."

Ino's fingers twist in the back of Sakura's shirt and her tears carve channels in Sakura's skin.

"I love you," Sakura tells her.

Her voice is firmament.

Her words ring like bells.

It's just truth.

"I love you," Sakura says.

(It's Ino, after all, who taught her that truth was the best weapon, who taught her that facing the truth would make her strong.

She's right. As always. (Not that Sakura will tell her that.)

Loving Ino has only ever made Sakura strong.)