Day 26:
Reality is bordered by feathered edges. Ino is trying her damndest to make them solid again.
She thinks it's not working.
Contextualize it, she reminds herself. What would you have thought about this a week ago? Two weeks ago? Yesterday?
It's a meditative exercise. The idea is to ground herself in sober thoughts, to remember what the Ino of a more sound state of mind would've done and believed, but the problem is that Ino has been high for twenty-six days and her sober self was a long, long time ago. She hadn't expected to be here for this long. The memories blink into and out of existence like a heat mirage. Are they all real? Or, a scarier thought – are they all fake? Besides, Ino is a logical, hard-headed person to her best self-imagining. So, doesn't that mean that she would have always made the same choices?
Satoshi is teasing her. He met her at the door and guided her past the bouncers. No patch-up. It's been fourteen hours since she last experienced the Rapture. Her arms are bare and her blood is empty and her head is, too, all but for the thought that this is not how this is supposed to go. She's on a mission – it's her responsibility to do this, to take the drugs, to bring them home, and to figure out what is going on. She's in Satoshi's good graces. She knows now that their operation is a vigilante effort of some kind – he tried to impress her with his sense of justice, with his peaceful ideals and his hatred of ninja politics. The motivations are somewhat clear, it's just the method that needs deciphering now, and the method is drugs.
Ino has to figure it out. She has to take the fucking drugs.
"None of the other women get such treatment," she points out, her hand on his thigh and her voice pitched in a coy feminine whine. "What makes me so special?"
Internally, she's pissed. He's holding drugs over her head, drugs she needs – for the mission, to do her God damn job – in exchange for her time. Or perhaps "services" is the right word. Both, really.
"What can I say? You're a step above." Satoshi is a terrible flirt. Witty half the time and proverbially falling on his face the other. Before, she still might've tucked away that flattery to privately enjoy, to add it to the cushion of her self confidence, but now, it just stings. Now, she wants to be like everyone else here, the other shinobi swaying and dancing to the music, lost in the Rapture, in the rhythm of bodies and the melody of conjoined hearts. They are one here. All of them.
All of them but Ino. She's gnashing her teeth and has to remind herself that's hardly attractive, but it's hard not to be frustrated, barred from her mission like this, from progress, from the sea of togetherness lapping at a shore just out of reach while she's nothing but a tide pool, isolated and left behind in the changing ocean depths. She can sense it. There's something powerful here, as if the answer to the universe is being held over her head somewhere above her, if only she could figure it out. If only she could get there.
She could…
After all, Ino thinks, her eyes darting to the jubilant revelers around her, part of her mission is to bring home unused drugs, and thus far, the bouncers and dealers refuse to give out patches they aren't sticking on to people themselves. She'd seen a fight break out over it at the door at least once a night. Not to mention, she has to take the drugs.
She has to take the drugs.
She has to –
I need –
Deep breath. Deep, deep breath. Get a hold of yourself. Take the drugs to build confidence, to build trust and get closer to the truth and trick Satoshi into thinking he's the one holding the cards, but the point is that he isn't. Ino doesn't need the drugs, for fuck's sake – except that she does. For the mission.
Does it really make a difference, then? Doesn't that mean that, in reality, Satoshi has something she needs, and she has something Satoshi wants, and so.
And so. Tit for tat. Service for patronage. It's her responsibility.
Ino slides into his lap and wraps her arms around his shoulders, and it's nothing at all like the deeply pleasurable connections of the Rapture, but she can fake it for now.
"Tell you what," she purrs into his ear, pressing her body to his, her crotch grinding against his growing erection in time with the music. His hands come up to grab her waist, and she knows she has him now by the ferocity of his grip. He exhales slowly in an attempt to steady himself, but she's not about to let that work. Ino slides her hands up his chest, neck, to his face, back down again before wrapping her fingers through the belt loops of his jeans. "I'll give you what you want, but you have to do something for me, first."
"And what's that?" He breathes.
"I want extra."
The hands trailing up her sides stop. He tenses minutely, but she pretends not to notice, continuing her impromptu lap dance. When he speaks, his voice is carefully neutral, but she isn't worried about his poorly disguised suspicion.
"You're not planning to sell, are you?"
Ino laughs, a low, sultry sound. "No, nothing like that. I'm only interested in having a good time, Satoshi-kun…"
"Don't tell me this isn't enough for you?" He fires back. His hands are moving again and his hips are thrusting in a facsimile of sex, and she knows he's already decided to say yes. She only has to push a little more.
She leans in. Her tongue slides over the shell of his ear before she speaks, and he can't quite hide his shudder. It's almost too easy. She can only imagine what he'd be like if he used.
"Don't you remember?" She murmurs. "High tolerance, and all…"
It takes him a second, but then he remembers the conversation and grins.
"You've got a deal."
He slips her two. The first one she slyly pockets to hide from prying eyes – not that anyone here likely has the brain power to notice at the moment – and the second, she brings to her lips, holding eye contact as she slides her tongue over it with half lidded eyes before sticking it to her arm.
That seems to do the trick. He picks her up, his hands under her ass and her legs wrapped around his waist. The pulse of his blood is an emotion she can feel. The Rapture takes only a few seconds to begin its magic, and then Ino is back there again, in that ocean with everyone else, and Satoshi's hands and mouth are little flames along her skin. It feels so good it almost hurts, like that mind melting, urgent pleasure just before an orgasm.
He brings her to a couch shoved against the wall on the third level. A few people are sprawled along the floor, too high to move. Others smile at the ceiling or crouch against walls, rocking back and forth, caught up in the euphoria. Still others are doing exactly what she and Satoshi are about to, and some of the dancers are close enough that she could reach out and touch them, but Ino hardly cares at the moment. Public sex or not, a drug den is hardly a place to be concerned for modesty.
Tit for tat, my ass, Ino thinks as Satoshi yanks down her pants and kisses the inside of her thigh. She's definitely getting the better deal here. If it feels this good already – hell, if Sakura's clinical hands on her are enough to make her heart squeeze with an emotion so fierce that her eyes water – then, full blown sex?
Hell yeah.
When his mouth finds its goal, Ino takes a shuddering breath in her surprise. It quickly morphs into a scream. How could anything feel that damn good? Her cries are lost to the music and the sounds of the party, and she's rising higher and higher to come crashing down like a powerful wave on the shore, hands fisted in his short hair. Every touch stokes the fire between her legs. Her skin is so sensitive it seems she can feel every atom vibrate at his touch.
It's amazing.
It's also entirely tactile.
The thing, she thinks, the thought vaporous and unstable in her addled mind. Where is - I don't –
What is she doing wrong? No, that's not it, is it? It's not wrong, something is just missing, because it's different. Her body feels like one huge tangle of nerves, just like it does when Sakura performs those troublesome chakra scans, but it's more than that, too, and Ino realizes that her initial suspicions were correct. It's the emotional aspect – the intimacy of their friendship – that makes the contact feel like the first warm day after a long winter, like things are right, and good, and the pleasure is part of her, not just happening to her.
Satoshi is giving her an experience. Sakura, accidentally or not, is bringing to life something that is already there, something that won't leave her when it's over.
It's not real though. The drugs, her mind protests, but only weakly. It's too hard to think about that right now.
It's too hard to think about that ever, but it's difficult to remember that there will come a day when she won't feel that way, when the drugs have finally been flushed from her system and Sakura will just be Sakura again, and Ino won't feel any which way about it except for the affection she's always had for her best friend.
The thought is saddening. It shouldn't be though, right? She hadn't been sad about it before. They'd been perfectly content in their friendship, so why should she be sad about it later? You can't lose something that's never existed.
She just has to wait it out. Wait until the mission is over and things are back to normal, and avoid Sakura as much as she can until then, because the more she thinks about this the more lost she becomes.
In the meantime, Satoshi is a pretty damn good substitute.
#
This room is so. Damn. Empty.
Sakura has gone through her bag at least ten times in search of any way to alleviate her boredom. She's sifted through her reports, catalogues of symptoms, medical journals, drug tests and the letters from Tsunade several times. She's read the books she brought with her, cover to cover, and then backwards just for the hell of it. She's completely out of distractions.
She pretends not to be worried as she paces their dingy "hotel" room, which is not really a hotel, but rather a shack located a mile from the nearest drug den. The floorboards are rotting and it smells faintly of mold, though it's at least well ventilated, considering all the cracks in the siding and the fact that the window won't completely close. A single threadbare mattress is shoved into the corner. It's covered in mysterious stains that she prefers not to think about, a gross accumulation of bodily fluids, and the first thing she'd done upon arriving over three weeks ago was cover it with the tarp in her backpack. The crinkling makes it difficult to sleep, but not as difficult as getting over the thought of what may or may not have happened on that mattress.
It's dank and her clothes are sticking to her skin in the August heat. There is no air conditioner, of course. She pulls at her shirt irately. The small bathroom consists of a grungy toilet and a shower-tub combination that, when used, probably gets her more dirty than clean. The sink faucet drips with an infuriating lack of rhythm. Really, isn't it the monotony of the sound that usually drives people crazy? But, no. This room is so old and abused that even the water droplets are off time.
In the few hours since Ino left, Sakura has literally worn a groove into the deteriorating floorboards. She doesn't plan on mentioning it, though. If Ino knows exactly how distressing she finds this situation, she'd be pissed. She'd probably go on another rant about how she's perfectly capable, thank you very much, and how Sakura's worry is totally unjustified, as if they aren't on a mission to drug Ino up repeatedly until Sakura can untangle the mass of chemicals slowly killing her. It's like diffusing a time bomb. Only messier.
It's not that Sakura doesn't trust her skills. Poisons and analytical toxicology are two of her specialties, but this isn't like her other cases for a few reasons. The first is the obvious fact that she's not working via petri dish or lab rat, but rather, a live human. Her best friend, no less. The second is that she has absolutely nothing to go off of. There are no drugs like the Rapture.
Sakura forces her butt to connect with the plastic covered mattress and puts her head in her hands. This sucks.
It started quietly, as bad situations often do. Rumors, mostly. Something about a new substance, a recreational party drug that both she and Tsunade dismissed as some variation of a pre-existing one. They figured it was a combination of prescription pills and herbs that make people "feel good," as most drugs are intended to do. Their fellow shinobi whispered about it to each other, but it's not like that isn't to be expected. Ninja have hard lives. It's no secret that many of them cope with constant mortal danger, shortened life spans, PTSD, violence, and other recurring, stressful situations with alcohol and drugs. Tsunade and her sake. Shikamaru and his cigarettes. Naruto and his ramen, she thinks wryly.
It's one of those unspoken things, a silent agreement of non-judgment. It didn't seem like something worth worrying about.
And then people started disappearing. It's a confused mishmash of facts. The rumors led interested people to a certain place. They went. They came back. They left again. This happened with increasing frequency, and the effects didn't go unnoticed, but rather ignored for the sake of shinobis' unspoken agreement not to ask questions about these things. The side effects manifested in haggard faces, chronic lateness, and other predictable – and mostly benign seeming – results. Then they started happening more. People began leaving for weeks at a time. Eventually, they didn't come back at all.
The situation is entirely frustrating. How can a drug have such powerful effects and leave no chemical traces in the blood? Neither she nor Tsunade had ever seen anything like it. To make matters more annoying, the manufacturers refuse to sell in bulk despite the best efforts of previous reconnaissance. Without a good amount of the substance to work with - or any, in this case - lab study is impossible, but the dealers insist: only one patch at a time, and only to be taken at the party under their watchful eyes. In other words, no narks and spies allowed.
You have to go to the party if you want the drug.
If you want the drug, you have to let the dealer apply it.
If the dealer applies it, you can kiss your chakra control, your mental faculties, and your drug independency goodbye.
It didn't take long for her to figure out the system. A drug provided straight from the source, and only in small doses, prevents smaller dealers from reselling it and inventive addicts from being able to recreate it. They're cutting out the middleman to keep the price incredibly high. You go to the party, you pay an exorbitant amount for a highly addictive drug – a "fun time" – and then you're hooked. You keep seeking it out until you simply stop leaving the parties at all.
The "festivities," meanwhile, are held in the middle of nowhere. Dirty parts of distant cities, far from ninja villages, hence her disgusting accommodations.
Sakura wishes for the umpteenth time that she could simply charge in there and kick the shit out of everyone involved, but this isn't a small time operation. This is more than just a drug. It's more powerful than that. Shinobi are vanishing like – well, like the name implies – and recklessly attacking will only push the masterminds further into hiding. Rather, this is an operation that requires a delicate touch. It requires someone adept in acting and reconnaissance. Someone who's good at getting answers and has the mental fortitude needed to combat the incredible psychological addictiveness.
It requires Ino.
And as the only combat and mission ready medical kunoichi with a specialization in toxicology that isn't the hokage, it requires Sakura, too.
Too bad she isn't living up to her name. Three weeks and basically no progress. Ino's list of physiological responses and symptoms could paper her whole bedroom, and Sakura has yet to figure out what's causing even half of them, let alone the link between them. Is the decreased efficacy of the euphoria inducing substance due to a tolerance, or the normal course of the drug? Is Ino's chakra growing weaker because of a physical imbalance, or a mental one?
She glares into the darkness outside their window and mentally notes the time. It's nearing one in the morning. Ino has been gone for five hours, which is two longer than she said she'd need, and the alarm bells in Sakura's head have been going off for at least that long. Something is wrong, her brain keeps insisting, but she can't exactly wander into a drug den and ask around to see if that's the case or not. Ino wouldn't take kindly to it either. Even if their friendship is decidedly solid again, something is off lately. Ino's been spending less and less time in the room. She's gotten less talkative. No more long chats in the downtime between parties. No more high musings.
Ino is avoiding her, and Sakura is worried and hurt and frankly, lonely, trapped in this room all day, but she shoves it all underneath invented anger and pretends she's taking offense to it, because that's what they do. Even if she's terrified that Ino is losing a battle to an addiction she's obligated to have, and Sakura is therefore losing her, and she's failing – failing her friends again – because of her own incompetence. She should've figured this out by now, she should've found the answers a week ago so they could both go home and chalk up all of the weird things happening between them to drugs and stress.
But they can't because Sakura can't do her God damn job. She pushes her knuckles into her eyes and refuses to cry. Ino will come in soon and she doesn't want to be caught like this, confused and distraught, so she'll rage at her friend as soon as that door opens. She'll insult her if she has to. Competitiveness is a river of kerosene between them, and implications of inferiority are the sparks that ignite it.
At this point, Sakura will do anything to tilt the world back into its usual angle, even if all she wants to do is grab Ino and hide them both under a quilt like they used to do when they told each other secrets, sinking into Ino's mattress, awake far past their bedtimes.
Some things never change, she supposes.
When Ino at last stumbles through the door, Sakura proves herself right. She jumps to her feet and is immediately at Ino's side to exemplify their relationship in a nutshell: caring and concern threaded tightly between insults and petty bickering.
"Ino-pig, what the hell?" She gripes, closely following the half-limp blond to the mattress. "Why did you take so long? You worried the crap out of me, you know! I was ten minutes away from barging in there and –"
Ino shoots her a withering glare that doesn't hold nearly as much hostility as it should. She's tired. The peak of the drugs has passed, and her words don't have nearly the amount of snarky bite to them that she would've liked.
"You're welcome," she says, dropping the unused patch into Sakura's hand.
It's like being handed a winning lottery ticket. Finally, finally. Sakura almost jumps for joy. Now, maybe, she can at last unravel this mystery, and they can finally go home. Something has changed between them, and now, each day they spend here feels like they're slowly snowballing towards a cliff, gathering layers upon layers of emotional debris and kicking up dust on the way, but it's not yet bad enough that they can't recover from it, she hopes. She nearly turns away to break out her lab kit and medical bag before remembering her earlier worries. Five hours is a long time.
"You're amazing," she preempts her question, hoping to avoid one of Ino's recently developed mood swings. (Well, she's always had mood swings, but not quite like this.) Unfortunately, Ino catches on instantly.
"What is it, Forehead?"
Sakura sighs. Maybe she shouldn't ask. It might be kinder not to… but she wants to know. She's scared for Ino, but also for them, and she hasn't felt this acutely vulnerable in a long time. The look on Ino's face sends Sakura into internal conniptions of self-consciousness and a peculiarly selfless kind of worry that she hasn't experienced since she was twelve-years-old, beaten black-and-blue from the Forest of Death and trying to convince herself to raise her hand to warn Hayate and Kakashi-sensei of that damn mark – not since Sasuke.
Which is exactly why the need to get the hell out of here.
But Sakura has always been second-in-command to her emotions. Even when they're painful. Even when she isn't sure if they're real.
"How'd you do it?"
"How do you think?" Ino deadpans.
Stupid feelings. Stupid, nonsensical, ridiculous, stress-induced opportunistic totally absurd – don't ask, Sakura, don't you dare, this is dumb and you know it –
"You're not falling in love with him, are you?"
Ino looks like she's trying to laugh and sneeze at the same time. "Don't be ridiculous, Sakura! What the hell?"
"Then – then why'd you do it?" Sakura stutters, singling out the thin strand of anger from the ball of raveled emotions in her chest, sparking like stripped wires. "I thought you said you didn't want to? That you were just going to hold it over his head?"
"To get something back. Use that forehead of yours. Aren't you happy we finally got something out of all this?"
She's not, though. She's not happy at all anymore. Sakura grits her teeth and goes to fish her medical kit from her travel bag without another word.
"What the hell is your problem?" Ino shouts at her back. The plastic rumples like parodied thunder as she sits up, but Sakura doesn't turn around from where she's laying out supplies on the floor.
"I don't have a problem," she mutters.
"You obviously do. What is going on in that gigantic head of yours?"
Sakura's hand unconsciously goes to touch her forehead. When she realizes what she's doing, it just makes her angrier. She spins around, furious at herself, and at Ino, and at everything in-between them.
"What is your problem? You're the one that's getting angry! It was just a question –"
"A fucking ridiculous question!" Ino counters. "Why would you ask me something like that? Do you think I can't do my fucking job? Because, as far as I know, I'm the one that's making progress, Sakura. I'm the one that's fucking drug dealers and putting my life on the line here while you're sitting on your ass accomplishing nothing!"
Boy, oh boy, does it hurt. It's like Ino just turned her inside out to show her, yet again, how little worth there is on either side.
Has Sakura ever done anything worthwhile for anyone? If she has, she suddenly can't remember. Maybe she's as weak as she'd been at twelve-years-old. Maybe she's just gotten better at hiding it.
It's hard to tell, right now.
"You're not high, are you?" Sakura asks, carefully concealing the little shred of hope that maybe she can blame this on something else, but Ino rolls up her sleeve and her arm is bare.
"What's it look like? I've been coming down for an hour already. Maybe that's the problem," she mutters distractedly.
"Since when is being sober a problem?"
Ino doesn't answer. She just grits her teeth and glares. Sakura approaches her, slowly, cautiously, like one might approach a snarling dog.
"Ino, I don't –"
But as soon as Sakura's hand hits her shoulder, Ino flinches like there's a hot iron on her skin, and then she's whirling around Sakura and heads straight for the door.
"Fuck you," she snaps. "I don't need your pity."
Ino slams the door behind her.
What a ridiculous question. That girl is too sensitive for her own good. With her emotions spilled across the floor all the time, can Ino really blame herself for accidentally stepping all over them? How could she not, when Sakura questions her abilities like that?
The guilt is there anyway.
Stupid Sakura and her stupid, gigantic heart, the only part of her body bigger than her forehead, Ino thinks, and her dumb question, dumb, pretty girl, so sad all the time, stupid –
I don't need this shit. Ino hurries her pace. Maybe she shouldn't have left the party in the first place.
#
Back in the room, Sakura is already hard at work. She preps a cell with potassium bromide, prepares the solvent, and carefully cuts the patch into fourths. It shouldn't take more than four tries.
She's Tsunade's apprentice, after all. Second best med-nin in Konoha and one of the best in the world. She's saved lives, created cures for some of the most deadly toxins known to man. She can change a landscape with her fists, has outwitted and beaten S-class shinobi… Sakura has helped to save the world.
Why is it then, when Ino belittles her, she can't remember these things?
Ino is the only person in her life, barring Sasuke, that has ever made her feel so thoroughly inadequate. The only two she would ever let make her feel that way.
Sakura smiles humorlessly. Some things really don't change.