Disclaimer: See first chapter.
AN: Sorry it took a while, but both my beta and I have been busy the past couple of weeks. But to relax, I just saw POTC3 twice this weekend. Best weekend ever! Does anyone else miss Scruffington? I was mad they stuck him with the white wig again, but he's still got a nice little niche in my heart despite that. If you like my story, give me a life-size Norrington doll and I'll love you forever.
Sakura wasn't sure how the picture on the flag looked like a drunken pelican. It was clearly an egret with a sailor hat holding a bottle of sake. Ino must have been drunk when she was looking at that flag, which begged the question: why was Ino drunk before she even entered the bar?
It was a seedy place, not a place Sakura would have chosen to go had she been the one to make the decision. But Ino always had to have things her way. As she moved closer to the bar, bathed in gaudy neon lights, she could hear raucous singing inside.
"Geez, is the whole damn bar having a sing-a-long?" she wondered aloud.
She had gone there almost right after work. Tsunade had kept her busy doing paperwork for the rest of the afternoon, and was a little more than amused when Sakura confessed that she had been foolish in asking for so much deskwork to keep her mind off one little incident, and immediately afterwards requested that she be taken off of temporary desk duty.
"Got over it fast, did you?" Tsunade had said, her eyes twinkling.
Sakura had hesitated in her reply. Truthfully, she still hadn't quite gotten over it, but she wasn't sure if admitting that to the Godaime would do her much good. Luckily for her, Tsunade had continued before she got a chance to properly answer the question.
"Fine, you can go back to your usual routine. But you're stuck doing deskwork for today, since I already had some things planned out for you…"
It wasn't a bad day; it just was just very busy later in the afternoon. A hectic afternoon might have been a bad day in some people's books, but Sakura would rather have too much paperwork to do in too little time, rather than too many life-or-death surgeries. As long as nobody died while she was taking care of things, she always felt she had a relatively good day.
It was so busy, though, that she stayed for much longer than she meant to without even realizing it. It turned out that Tsunade had boxes and boxes of files that needed to be updated in accordance with her recent notes. Sakura had spent her entire shift (and then some) copying things out and trying to interpret her mentor's chicken-scratch writing with barely any time to eat or take a washroom break. By the time she looked at the clock, she realized it was already seven in the evening, and she was hungry, thirsty, and tired. She was in no mood to head out to a bar with Ino, but she knew there would be hell to pay if she didn't, so she really didn't have a choice.
She just hoped her friend would understand if she decided to go home early. Sleep was a precious thing in the life of a medic.
Sakura pulled the door open and stepped inside.
Through the thick haze of smoke, she could see the outline of about five or six people gathered at a table, laughing and singing. It came as a slight surprise to see it was Ino, surrounded by several young, handsome shinobi, all of them singing at the top of their lungs some drunken rendition of a popular song that seemed to play on the radio all the time these days. Leading the group in singing was Ino, who was also conducting dramatically.
Sakura didn't even know why she was surprised. Maybe it was because she fully expected Ino to be drunk already, but she didn't think she would ever lower her inhibitions this much. At least she wasn't dancing naked on the table… yet.
"Hey," greeted Shikamaru. When she looked towards him, she saw Chouji there too, nodding his head grimly. Sakura didn't even see them; they were sitting at a smaller table just beside Ino's larger one, looking almost dejected. She went over and slid into a chair, her back to the wildly conducting blonde girl.
"Been here long?" she asked conversationally.
Shikamaru rolled his eyes. "What time is it now?"
"Around seven-thirty, maybe seven-forty-five," she replied, shrugging. "I think so, anyway."
"Then we've been here for two hours already."
Chouji grumbled. "And she's been singing for one of them. I think she's completely forgotten about us," he added almost resentfully.
Sakura glanced over her shoulder at Ino (who hadn't seemed to notice her arrival) and then turned back to the boys. She noticed, in the dim bar light, that Shikamaru was sporting a painful looking bruise on his left cheekbone. She winced. "Er – I guess Ino did find you yesterday, huh?" she said, peering at the wound. "She must have been mad."
The lazy chuunin sighed. "Yep."
"I don't know why she gets so mad," Chouji was saying under his breath. After watching the drunken Ino for a moment, he threw back what remained of his drink – something that looked and smelled like whisky. Sakura wrinkled her nose at the scent of alcohol that wafted off of Chouji. "Shikamaru totally has the right to do what he wants, when he wants. She can't just expect him to hang around if she's not even going to pay attention to him," Chouji continued sourly. He sniffed in the direction of Shikamaru's cocktail and eyed the drink greedily.
Shikamaru snorted. "You mean like she's doing now?" he said, sliding the drink across the table to his chubby friend.
"Exactly," Chouji said, plucking the straw from the glass and chucking it behind him. It hit a nearby ninja in the nose as he was busy trying to kiss a waitress half to death.
"Watch it!" the man snarled, prying his lips from the woman's and throwing a deadly glare at Chouji. Sakura briefly looked at the woman and saw that her disgustingly large breasts were almost falling out of her impossibly low-cut shirt. She blushed and looked away in case the waitress suffered a wardrobe malfunction of some kind.
Chouji puffed himself up and gave him a look that was equally as dangerous. "Or what?" he snapped. "You'll kiss me to death too? I'm a jounin, buddy, what are you going to do?"
The man looked as though he was about to say something nasty in response, but pursed his lips and turned back to the waitress. Apparently, he decided that picking a fight with a heavyweight jounin was a bad idea. Seconds later, the man and the waitress gravitated to the other side of the smoggy bar and continued their little "session" there.
"If I didn't know that Ino would hunt me down if I tried to leave, I would have left already," Shikamaru mumbled, crossing his arms. "But she's fucking relentless."
"Amen, brother," Chouji chimed, guzzling down Shikamaru's cocktail and practically slamming the empty glass on the table. "I'm getting some more drinks. Anyone want anything?"
"Get me a… bottle of water," Shikamaru said lamely. "I'm going to use the mens' room, I'll be back in a bit."
"I'll have water too, Chouji," Sakura said with a faint smile. This bar had a very uncomfortable atmosphere. She watched the chubby ninja stand up and leave the table, her eyes following him until he blended into the crowd around the bar. When she turned back to the table, she was suddenly struck by how alone she was in the room full of people. Shikamaru had gone to the bathroom, Chouji went to get drinks, and Ino was too busy singing obnoxiously with her new friends, half of whom probably just wanted to get into her panties (assuming she decided to wear a pair tonight). Sakura was sitting, all alone, surrounded by tables that were nearly overstuffed with patrons. If there was ever a time to feel small and insignificant, it was now.
There was a blinding flash all of a sudden that lasted for a few milliseconds, and Sakura instinctively looked for the source. A few chuunin at another table were taking pictures of themselves being generally obnoxious, probably to show to their obnoxious friends who couldn't make it in the hopes that it would spur jealousy – or maybe even guilt at having missed a really great time.
Sakura didn't want to be there. She looked down at what she was wearing and felt decidedly out of place in her nurse's uniform. She just wanted to go home and change into some sweatpants and a t-shirt and go to bed in her actual bed, not on her couch, where she would mostly likely dream of being at the hospital, treating Ino for alcohol poisoning and scolding her for being so pushy and demanding all the time.
A sudden presence at her table made itself very aware to Sakura, and she snapped her gaze up to meet… Kakashi's.
"Sensei!" she cried. "What the hell?"
"Language," he berated cheerfully. "I came to lend you that book."
Sakura's mouth gaped open like she was a fish out of water as a moderately thick book was dumped into her hands. Kakashi had said that he would bring it by the hospital, but she wasn't holding him to his word, honestly. After she ran off yesterday, she hadn't been expecting to see him at all for a little while, but she was wrong.
In any case, this was clearly not the hospital.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded in a quiet, nervous voice.
Kakashi blinked. "I came to lend you that book," he repeated matter-of-factly, gesturing to the tome she was now holding.
"A little late, aren't you?" she said, tossing the book on the table in front of her. "My shift at the hospital ended a while – ah." Sakura gave a wry smile. Kakashi was always late for everything, not just training sessions and physical examinations. It figured he would be late in bringing a stupid book by.
"Ah?" he echoed.
"Nothing." She looked away as a deep blush swept over her face. This was embarrassing, a little. It was mere luck he hadn't asked her why she ran away so suddenly the day before. She wasn't sure how she would explain her way out of that one.
"So anyway," he said, raising his eyebrows and politely surveying the bar. She thought she saw a flicker of disdain cross what she could see of his face before his gaze settled on her once more. "I came for another reason too."
Sakura frowned miserably. She was in for it now, she thought. Even though Kakashi didn't seem the type to take pleasure in another's humiliation, she was absolutely sure he wouldn't let her forget the day she literally ran from her own juvenile problems. She knew exactly what he would say, too – she could hear Kakashi's voice chastising her in her own head. 'Sakura, you're eighteen! Stop playing the evasion game!', and 'Sakura, when are you going to grow up and start acting like an adult?'
Or maybe that was just her guilt making its opinion known using her former sensei's voice. Damn dirty tricks.
She never did get to find out what that other reason was. At that moment, Ino seemed to have noticed Sakura sitting there through her thick haze of drunkenness and swung around awkwardly. "Hey! Forehead! Your hair is like a lighthouse beacon, you know?" Ino said loudly. Sakura stiffened at being addressed by her drunken friend and grimaced, not even turning around. She really did not like being around Ino when she was drunk.
Sakura sent Kakashi a vaguely apologetic look, at which he just tilted his head slightly in amusement. She hoped that if she just pretended she didn't hear Ino (which was impossible seeing as she was extremely obnoxious and would not have needed a megaphone even to yell commands at teammates two kilometers away), she would assume that she got the wrong person – after all, there had to be more than just one person in Konoha with pink hair, right? – and just turn back to entertaining the boys that surrounded her.
Ino, however, did not take kindly to being ignored no matter who happened to be ignoring her, even when her drunken stupor barely allowed for cohesive thought. Still convinced it was Sakura, she whipped out a slender, sweaty arm, hooking her hand around Sakura's throat and pulling hard. Sakura gave a loud yelp of protest and jerked back. Her arms flailed wildly in a futile attempt to keep herself balanced on her teetering chair, but eventually both girls went tumbling to the floor with a disconcerting 'thud', followed by the crashing of their chairs. Kakashi winced. That did not sound very good.
He peered under the table to see what had become of Sakura and Ino.
They were lying on the floor, skirts riding a bit high and arms entangled around each other awkwardly, expressions of shock on their faces like they'd just been caught fondling each other in public.
Easy, boy, Kakashi admonished himself lightly.
Sakura was nothing short of humiliated. Her legs were splayed apart, one crushed uncomfortably between Ino's thighs. She had twisted after realizing that she was clutching Ino around the shoulders, and tried to push herself up and push her skirt down, all at the same time.
Ino was a little less modest. She looked down at her legs, most of which were brazenly bared to everybody, and gave a loud bark of laughter, waving off her fall like it was no big deal.
Sakura's facial expression showed that she was thinking the exact opposite of Ino at the moment. She was wearing a blush that could easily rival the intensity of her hair, and she was rubbing her aching throat miserably. It wasn't everyday that your best friend decided to grab you around the throat and drag you to the ground in the middle of a crowded bar.
Just then, Chouji came back with two bottles of water in one hand, and another glass of brown liquid, filled almost to the brim. "Sorry it took so long," he said. "I had a bit of a disagreement with the bartender over how much really constitutes 'a glass' and – eh? Kakashi-sama?"
Chouji's small eyes took in the sight of Kakashi, sitting at their table with his hands clasped in front of him, giving him an inquisitive look.
"I just dropped by to see Sakura," Kakashi said. "And I was actually going to – "
"I'm going home," Sakura announced, interrupting Kakashi and grumbling irritably. If Kakashi thought she was rude, he politely kept his mouth shut about it.
Chouji looked surprised. "But I just got you some water…"
She studied the water in his hand and then grabbed one of the bottles. "Well, because you're a nice person, I'll take the water, but it will be coming home with me. Tell Shikamaru I've gone too."
Chouji nodded almost mournfully. "Well… I suppose it's for the best. Man, I wish I could leave now, but somebody's got to make sure nothing bad happens to our dear blonde princess over there," he said, jerking a thumb towards Ino, who had one leg up on the table and seemed to be pointing out various scars to her male entertainees. Predictably, they didn't mind.
"I'm sure one bad thing wouldn't kill her," Sakura mumbled. "Might even knock some sense into that fat head of hers."
"What?" Chouji made a face. "I didn't catch that."
"Nothing."
Sakura couldn't consciously recall a time before now when she moved so fast just to be out of a place that almost made her literally sick. But there was a first for everything, obviously.
-
Sakura was nearly at her wits' end when it came to Ino. She honestly didn't know of anyone else (personally) who found the greatest pleasure in torturing one's body by consuming bathtubs of alcohol. Honestly, she just never understood the need for the stuff. Her life was chaotic enough, and she didn't need the trouble of worrying whether her liver was doing its job properly or not. Alcohol, she found, was probably the only thing people would willingly consume to the point where they would throw up, and then do it all again the next day. All she knew was that if she ate a bad piece of pork and started throwing up, she would not be in any hurry to eat pork again.
Damn masochistic jerks, she grumbled to herself.
She also couldn't say she was really surprised, though. In a village where you constantly rang Death's doorbell, throwing up after a night of alcohol consumption probably seemed pretty tame.
For a moment, she entertained the visual of a generic Konoha ninja (who seemed almost Kakashi-esque in appearance) running up to a large mansion, ringing the doorbell, and running away just before the Grim Reaper opened the door in a fuzzy pink bathrobe and said, "Hello?"
But soon after, she was back in a foul mood. She really, really didn't like that Ino kept doing that kind of thing. As a medic, she knew just how harmful alcohol could be to one's body, but far be it from her to actually point this out to her sake-soaked friend. What Ino did on her own time was really none of her business, even if they were best friends, but it was when Ino pulled stunts like forcing her to come out at night (and grabbing her around the throat too) that she started losing it. Ino knew she hated alcohol, and yet she always insisted on spending her after-hours in a bar or some such thing. Sakura knew that if she really wanted to keep this friendship – and she did, really – she would have to go out and meet Ino halfway. Or, all the way, actually, seeing as Ino couldn't seem to get over this notion that she was, as Chouji put it, a blonde princess. God forbid she would actually volunteer to go to the park or Ichiraku with Sakura and just talk about nothing. Neither of them had done that for years. At least not together.
Sometimes she would sit at home after another bar outing with Ino and wonder if she was lame. She never drank anything but water when she went out to a bar, despite persistent prodding on Ino's part to "just try one, I promise you'll like it". She would go home and think that maybe she should have tried something, that maybe after her first drink she would magically understand its appeal, and that it would suddenly suffocate her doubts about herself and her life and take away all her stress.
The next day, though, she didn't usually regret not having a drink. She would wake up, refreshed and free of vomit and hangover, ready to work and patch up battered jounin and reckless genin all over again.
Sakura knew, deep down, that she didn't really want to drink. She was probably just reacting to the knowledge of being the only ninja who didn't make a regular habit of bar-hopping, and it bothered her a little, despite constantly reassuring herself that she was a well-adjusted young lady. Still, sometimes she just wanted to ditch her responsibilities and do something wild and crazy, like Ino was so prone to doing all the time.
Of course, her mind always rationed afterwards that there was a time and place for that sort of thing, usually between the hours of nine and eleven p.m. almost any day of the week, provided she didn't have a shift at six a.m. the next morning or an evening shift the night in question. And she definitely couldn't be drinking herself silly if she was on call either, in case there was an emergency surgery that one of the other medics or Tsunade needed help with. It certainly wouldn't do to have double vision if you're trying to pull weapon fragments out of somebody's chest.
And the rest of the time she would be working. When she also wasn't being Ino's doormat, of course.
Sakura could feel the muscles in her body tightening substantially the more she thought about Ino and her bossy, demanding, meddlesome ways. Friend or no, there were some things that just pissed Sakura off. She felt herself getting tenser as the seconds dragged by, and her chakra was coiling tightly like a pressed bedspring until, all of a sudden, her foot lashed out and she kicked a large rock (boulder, really) that was lying at the side of the road. The release of her chakra at the same time as the impact of her foot sent it flying several hundred feet into the air and away from her in a perfect arc, straight into the Hokage monument, where it collided into the carved crater of Tsunade's nose and got stuck. She swallowed heavily.
Oh great. Now it looked like the rocky Tsunade had a booger hanging out of her nose, and it was all because of a moment of blind fury. Maybe she should have aimed better… or just aimed in general.
She sighed and continued all the way home.
-
Sakura didn't sleep well that night. It could have been that she was restless, or that her mind was replaying the day over and over again, or even the fact that there was a lump in her mattress that had not been there before – at least, not that she remembered.
Or it could have been the fact that at 2:33am, Ino decided to stop over for a visit.
She was clearly inebriated and positively reeked of beer and sake as she leaned in the doorway, trying to focus her watery eyes on Sakura, who was holding the door open, a look of both irritation and surprise on her face.
"Haruno," Ino slurred. "I've got a pick to bone with you."
Sakura ignored that statement and yawned.
"Ino, why are you here at…" – she checked the wall clock – "…two thirty in the morning?!"
Ino pushed her way into the apartment, shrugging off a jacket Sakura didn't recognize. It looked far too big for Ino; the sleeves were rolled up so that she was not completely engulfed in it, but despite rolling up the sleeves, they still came down to her wrists and the length of the jack fell down to her mid-thigh.
"Where do you get off ignoring me all evening?" Ino demanded suddenly, shuffling over to the couch before tripping and gracelessly falling face-first onto it with a muffled, 'oof'. She rolled over awkwardly and glared at Sakura – or rather, she glared at a spot about three inches to the left of Sakura.
Sakura sighed. "Nothing I say to you is going to get through while you're drunk," she said, trying to sound as calm and rational as possible, but once she saw Ino in her doorway and listened to her accusatory tone and watched her thanklessly invade her apartment, she felt her anger swelling again.
"Oh, that's rich!" came Ino's haughty reply as she sat up. She swayed dangerously for a couple of seconds before righting herself and glaring a little bit to the right of Sakura this time.
"Well, what then? Did you ignore me just for fun? Or were you too busy flirting with Kakashi-sama to pay attention to me?"
Sakura sighed. She felt the strong desire to massage her temples, but wondered if that would have been redundant. "Ino…" she practically ground out at her blonde friend. "I – "
Inner Sakura snorted. You what? Are you going to tell her what a horrible and selfish friend she's being? You think she's going to remember your angry rant in her state of mind? What good will reprimanding her do if she's not going to remember it?
Inner Sakura had a point.
Ino was never going to get a clue if she was drunk while Sakura tried venting, so she just shut her mouth and refused to say another word. Feeling miserable for not being able to express herself emotionally to her friend, Sakura started down the hallway to her bedroom again. Let Ino have the couch – why not? Ino might have been annoying, irritating, drunk, selfish, and ego-centric, but she was still her friend, and no matter what Sakura did or what Ino did or what anyone did, nothing was going to change that.
She had just reached her bedroom door when Ino's voice floated down the hallway, sounding weak and tired.
"Urgh… I think I'm going to be sick…"
Sakura froze for a split second before turning back and rushing to her friend's side. God forbid any vomit got on the furniture…
She felt momentarily guilty for worrying more about the furniture than Ino, but managed to deflect some of the shame by focusing on hauling her friend to her feet and helping her stumble along to the bathroom. Ino was about a foot away from the toilet when she decided to vomit all over the floor. Immediately afterwards, the blonde's knees bluckled and she crumpled to the ground near her puddle of vomit.
Sakura sighed and rubbed her friend's back. This was going to be a long night.
-
Kakashi yawned and looked at the clock beside his bed. It was nearly noon. He'd spent a couple of hours in the bar after Sakura left last night, reading quietly while Chouji and Shikamaru grumbled and sipped their drinks and Ino sang on as if she hadn't choked Sakura earlier or spent the night ignoring everybody but the young ninja sitting around her.
He was actually rather pleased; his little outing to the bar was perfect for reading his Icha Icha book. It was noisy enough (because eerie silence always distracted him somewhat), and there was a light hanging almost right above his head, and he also had the bonus of sitting with a couple of depressed young ninja who were suffering from an intense alcohol buzz. It was very easy for him (not to mention convenient) to order a drink and slide the bill towards Chouji or Shikamaru. All in all, he'd gotten a fair bit of reading done and he was rather proud of himself.
It was just before he decided to leave that he noticed Sakura had left the book behind. The one he'd brought just for her as payment for borrowing money from her. He remembered making a sound of disapproval as he lifted the book carefully from the table and regarded it disdainfully.
Well, if she didn't want it, all she had to do was politely decline his offer – of course, that still didn't mean he was going to pay her back for the money he owed. He just thought, for once, that he would do a kind and charitable thing by lending her the only book in his apartment that he'd never once opened or used.
Actually, that wasn't true. He did use it as a coaster once, but that was a couple of years ago. He'd bought an actual coaster since then.
Kakashi stretched, hearing several consecutive cracks along his spine as he arched his body. A good stretch was like a mild form of good sex, he always felt. You could feel your body being pushed to the limit, and it felt so good, and then there was the gratifying release, where every single muscle seems to just let go and you can't help but sigh in bliss. He lay in bed for about ten minutes afterwards, contemplating whether or not to get up or go back to sleep. His bed was very comfortable, he had to admit, but he still had about forty-seven pages of his book to finish, and his book was unfortunately sitting, dog-eared, on his coffee table in the other room.
And he also had to pee, which he couldn't do in his bed (and hadn't done since he was four – he refused to count that other time involving the basin of warm water).
He let out a long exhale and made his decision.
After spending thirty minutes in the shower, twenty minutes trying to get his hair to look properly ruffled and unkempt, fifteen minutes dressing himself, and another thirty minutes snacking on a bowl of cornflakes without any milk, Kakashi finally made his way out the door, book in hand and face in book. He ambled down the street towards his favourite reading spot: the thick middle branches of a tall cherry blossom tree. He stopped only once to stare questioningly at a large boulder wedged in the nostril of the Godaime's face in the mountain which he definitely remembered hadn't been there the day before. He concluded, nodding to himself that it must have been another of Naruto's pranks – that boy was always up to something – and then continued on his way.
But when he got there, he was a little surprised to see a pink-haired girl sitting in the shade of the tree, a look of utmost displeasure on her face as she tossed another crumpled piece of origami paper into a growing pile beside her.
"Ah… Sakura." Kakashi lowered his book just as Sakura looked up at him. So much for spending a quiet day alone in a tree. He continued, "What a nice surprise."
Sakura stared at him for a while, her hand resting on a piece of red paper while a book lay open, weighed down at the corners by a few carefully chosen rocks. "Kakashi-sensei," she greeted almost mournfully, frowning. "I didn't expect you to be here."
"Hm. Sadly, expectations set are rarely met," he replied cryptically. But whether he was referring to her not expecting him, or him not expecting her, she didn't know.
Sakura looked up into his eye to see if she could somehow read it to see what he meant. She wished he didn't always wear that stupid mask, or pull his hitai-ate down so low that it covered the sharingan. It was hard to take cues from his facial expression when all you could see was his one eye.
In any case, despite not knowing whether he was pleased to see her or not, she was a little relieved that he had found her. It saved her the trouble of finding him later.
"Kakashi-sensei," she began, chewing on her lip and setting the paper aside, under a flat rock. "I think we need to talk."
AN: Next update soon, hopefully. We'll see what life hands us. Meanwhile, I'll just kidnap Norrington -- I mean, work on future chapters...