Warning: Semi-explicit sex scene. Meaning, I use the word "nipple."

Day 42:

The water from the showerhead sprays down like a thousand little bells chiming a thousand quiet sounds. It feels like voices whispering in her ears, comforting and kind and warm – warmer than she thought, before the patch – and maybe that'd been not very nice of her, to assume the water wasn't all that warm. It's trying it's best.

She doesn't know what expression she's making, but it's apparently very amusing. Ino laughs quietly and pushes herself off the floor of the tub, and the wet, sliding skin of their legs brushing makes Sakura shudder from head to toe with a startling sensation she can't name. Ino crawls forward and that feeling grows, enough to make her teeth chatter as the woman on top of her presses their chests together in a sensation of warm-good-close. She can feel Ino's heartbeat and it sounds like it wants to say something. Being this close together is like a discovery; it reminds her of that wholly satisfying feeling she gets when she finds a breakthrough in the lab or with a patient after weeks of hard work, only better. Oddly, it makes her want to dance.

When Ino presses their lips together, it's simultaneously the most erotic and the most soothing thing that's ever happened to her. Stop-go, stop-go, just like her heartbeat.

"You've never kissed anyone, right?" Ino is asking her, but not in a mean way. It's not condescending, and Sakura knows that because she can literally feel the intent like a breeze on her skin. All of Ino's rambling about interconnectedness suddenly makes sense.

Sakura doesn't trust her voice. She shakes her head.

Ino seems to be thinking about it, worried, and it makes Sakura worry, too, but only for a moment, and then they're kissing again. It's okay, Sakura tries to tell her without speaking. Her hands trail down Ino's back reassuringly. Their kisses are long and sweet and she's come a very long way in search of this, she thinks, even if she can't remember it right now, all for this feeling. She doesn't know what she's doing or how to do it, and some part of her is still scared and unsure, but Ino doesn't care about those flaws.

There is no striving. No begging for attention from boys that don't give a damn, no making up for stupid mistakes, no running through gauntlets to prove anything. It's just what it is, and it's enough to make her cry.

"S'okay," Sakura forces herself to say aloud when Ino hesitates. Her voice is heavy with emotion that she hopes will cross this distance.

She fists her hands in Ino's long, wet hair, arching her back with a shuddering gasp as she tries to get closer to that feeling, to the hands sliding over her stomach, her hips, the warm lips at her neck, all of it forcing the air from her lungs in a long, pained whine.

It's okay, she urges at Ino's questioning look. She lifts her arms to remove the soaking shirt from her body. Their bare skin pressed together satiates a craving she only realizes she has because now it's satisfied, and then more than that, when Ino makes a path of kisses from her lips to her chin, down to her neck, one hand planted firmly on Sakura's hip and the other at last sliding up to her breast, lightly pulling the nipple between her fingertips and making Sakura's body jerk underneath her.

Her head falls back and bumps into the wall behind her. The world spins a little, and it feels like she's falling into something soft and warm and wonderful. Ino nuzzles her stomach and lays her head there for a moment, her fingers finding Sakura's, pulling her hand to her mouth. She kisses the back of it with such tender reverence that Sakura has to bite her lip and squeeze her eyes shut, but the sob escapes her anyway. Ino does it again, the back of her hand, the inside of her wrist, and then there are fingers hooking around the waistband of her pants, catching her panties and tugging them both off. The pile of sopping clothes is tossed onto the bathroom floor and quickly forgotten.

Sakura's breath hitches when Ino at last kisses her way up her leg to her inner thigh and stops. She struggles to open her eyes. Ino is looking up at her, curious – laughing a little, but kindly, at the extent of emotion on her face – waiting for something.

Sakura finds her hand and holds it. Squeezes. It's okay.

There's the press of lips. Sakura inhales sharply, and when Ino pushes her tongue against her, she can't tell if the noise she makes is a sob or a scream, but it must be a good thing, because she can feel Ino shudder against her shaking thighs, and she wonders if it always feels this good, or if it's the drugs.

She decides it doesn't matter. The drugs don't matter. The fact that they're in the bathroom of a dingy hotel doesn't matter, and neither does the fact that they're supposed to be on a mission. None of it. This is better than the best thing she ever let herself fantasize about, and even if it hadn't been Ino in her head before, that doesn't matter either, because it works this way. It makes sense. Ino is her first everything – friend, confidant, fight, kiss, first this – and there's no one else she trusts more to lead her through uncharted territory.

Her muscles tense and the back of her eyelids explode with color, and she's actually glad that she has no control over her chakra or she might've just killed herself by accident when she slams her head into the wall again. The first deep breath she can take feels like the first deep breath after being underwater for a long time, or after the first snowfall, satisfying enough to make her conclude that she must've been struggling to breathe for years before this. When she opens her eyes, Ino is leaning over her. She looks thoroughly amused in a way that makes Sakura blush. As if all the blood in her body wasn't already busy being elsewhere.

"W-what…?"

Ino shakes her head, grinning. "Nothing."

In the brief moment of clarity between first times and second times, Sakura has the very troublesome thought that perhaps she should be worried about the fact that two operatives on an incredibly important assignment are now more committed to the drugs than the mission. She's not worried at all, though.