A/N: What's up fuckers.

Here's another one for ya. Oddly enough I think I'm ascribing my personality onto Ino...while trying to keep her behavior in character. Does that make me Ino? Is my spirit animal a self-absorbed boar?

Like, probably.

Anyway, if you wanna stroke my Ino-esque ego, definitely leave a review. More parties and punk rock and ~borderline~ smut to come.

~Morbid Original~

Chapter 6

Despite the altogether sleepless night Sakura found herself entirely too awake, haunted by vivid flashes of memory every time she dared to close her eyes. She could still feel him, his mouth pressed to her neck, desperate grasp on her hair, his…other parts, inside her. Try as she might to drown it out her skin screamed of his touch, the purple marks a perennial reminder; her ears rang with the faint echo of his breath, his every minuscule moan. She could even smell him for Christ's sake – the salty sweet of sweat and something else she could only identify as his scent, lingering in her hair.

Why had she let it happen? – or rather, why had she actively made it happen? Even after six or so hours of swarming through her skull these questions remained unanswered, her logic as ineffectual in their wake as her makeup was proving to be against the hickeys. But more disturbing than her inoperative rationale was the query inhabiting the other hemisphere of her brain: Why, despite all the dire consequences, had she liked it?

If she had. She refused to dwell on it long enough to decide, as her enjoyment of the transgression was completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. She had fucked up massively and no amount of pleasure taken from the deed could right the wrong she had manufactured. Or so she told herself in vain effort to keep the thought at bay as she swabbed her neck with cover-up, finally giving up and resigning herself to a thick scarf.

The second she heard the world outside wake up, the air fill with morning sounds of slamming doors and cheery greetings, she left her apartment. She wished to leave her relentless thoughts behind as well, but knowing this to be impossible she sought the next best thing: a distraction. Anything to draw her out of her head. Anything to keep her mind off the previous night, off sex and off Naruto.

"…He really is a dog, seriously! I thought he was gonna bite something off…"

…Okay, admittedly seeking Ino's company wasn't the best way to get sex off her brain, but she had few other options. Tenten was likely with Neji, and the boys weren't really early risers in general – and besides, she couldn't risk acting strangely if they mentioned his name or brought up her abrupt departure from the bar. Whether they had been partying or not, they were ninjas – someone must have noted their simultaneous disappearance. So alas, meeting Ino for brunch seemed to be the only available choice; but after a couple hours of listening to her drone on and on about her hookup, Sakura began to think her tireless conscience wasn't relatively that annoying.

"Aren't you hot in all that?" Ino asked, pausing in her tirade as if she'd just noticed Sakura's presence.

Yes, she was hot. The forbidding chill of dawn to which she had played unfortunate witness had proved quite misleading. It was abnormally warm for fall that day, and the long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans Sakura wore had brought a feverish glisten to her brow.

Yet she shook her head. "No, I'm fine," she insisted, trying to hide her joy as the mochi ice cream they'd ordered finally arrived.

"Suit yourself, freak," Ino said, midriff enviably bared as ever. Taking inaugural bite of her ice cream, "Oh my God," she moaned luxuriously. "This is better than sex."

"You wouldn't know," Sakura said, smirking at her friend despite the uncomfortable thud in her chest.

"You sure about that?"

Ino shot her a gaze so loaded Sakura dropped her spoon, sending it clattering to the floor. No way. Not her too. It couldn't be. What was it about that music that made people like her (and less unexpectedly, Ino) shake off the reigns of reason and drop their fucking panties? Again she seriously considered genjutsu as the cause. Otherwise, what were the odds that both of them would decide to screw their friends on the exact same night?

With a jolt her long-absent voice of reason piped up, and she caught on. The odds were pretty low.

"You're full of it," she said, voice shaking with uncertainty. But relief washed over her as Ino rolled her eyes in retreat.

"Okay, we didn't have sex," she admitted. "Everything but. Well, almost everything. I didn't want him going down on me – with that nose of his, you know –" She stopped short as the waiter appeared to supply Sakura with a new spoon, which he in turn nearly dropped. Once he had scurried a safe distance away Ino broke out laughing. "Oops."

Sakura, burning bright red in her shameless friend's stead, picked up the clean spoon and started to push the lumps of mochi around her bowl.

"You don't think that was a bad idea?" she hedged, eyes glued to the green and purple balls.

Ino shrugged. "Who cares? It's not like we're on the same team or anything," she scoffed, evoking another emphatic throb from Sakura's heart. Something in her face must have given away her distress, for all of a sudden Ino's eyes widened, flooded with incredulous clarity.

"You didn't!"

"Didn't what?" she tried to ask calmly, but her white-knuckle grip on the spoon further belied her guilt.

"You did!"

"I don't know what you're talking about –"

"Shut the fuck up – you fucked Sasuke!" Sakura froze, unsure whether she should let her friend's assumption stand or if the truth warranted reveal, but she didn't have time to decide. "I knew it! I thought something was up, you skanky little harlot!"

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, you both disappeared right after the show, for one. I thought you were running away from him at first, but…" She trailed off for a moment as the final pieces fell into place (albeit the wrong pieces) then let out a great squeal that made Sakura drop her spoon again, this time only onto the table. "It all makes sense now!" she waged on. "You went to smoke to calm your nerves and he met up with you afterwards! You dirty, filthy little streetwalker!"

In her excitement Ino's voice carried even farther than it usually did, once again catching the attention of the waiter as well as that of several passers-by. Sakura willed herself in vain to disappear into the booth's red vinyl upholstery. (There must be a ninjutsu for that, she thought. She would have to learn it.)

"Will you shut the fuck up please?" she begged, attempting to no avail to conceal her identity with a hand lamely shading her face. For once she cursed her remarkable hair color. "I'm the Hokage's apprentice, people know me!"

"Then maybe you shouldn't be such a nasty little slut," Ino chided, but gratefully at a more controlled volume. "So," she went on, grinning as she leaned across the table, "you finally took my advice and went after him. How long had you been planning this rendezvous, you sneaky whore?"

Retrieving her spoon once again, Sakura began to poke at the largest ball of mochi. "It wasn't planned," she said quietly, slightly thankful for the chance to talk about the situation even if the details weren't exact. "It kind of just…happened."

"Like spontaneously? In the heat of the moment?"

Sakura recalled that first clumsy kiss, how rapidly things had escalated after. All it had taken to turn a casual conversation into a full blown sexual frenzy was one touch of her lips to his, and the rest was history.

"Yeah, exactly."

"That's so romantic!" Ino swooned, eyes twinkling with a star-crossed naiveté she could only have gleaned from romance novels (or Gai-sensei).

Sakura's gaze fell back to her mochi. "That's not really the word I would use," she mumbled, still pushing the large purple lump around the bowl. Despite the heat she seemed to have gone off her dessert.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know, it's just…" she sighed, eyes glued to the roaming mochi. "It's just not how I pictured it." A quick glance at the blonde revealed she would need to elaborate – a tricky endeavor, as she was weaving a lie behind the truth. "It was just so…hasty. So sudden and weird and…not talked about."

Her carefully vague words seemed to have shed little light on the subject, as Ino simply blinked at her.

"Were you drunk?" she asked.

"No, not at that point."

"Did you puke?"

"No!"

"Was it good?"

At that moment the poor purple mochi ball suffered a particularly harsh jab from the spoon and perforated, releasing a river of melted ice cream. Sakura hurriedly took a bite, freezing her front teeth in her recklessness. As she squealed in discomfort her friend took a triumphant bite of her own dessert, beaming as she chewed.

"Gotcha," she chuckled, unable to hide her amusement in the face of her comrade's agony. "Then I don't see what the problem is. You liked it, he liked it. The only question is: when are you gonna do it again?"

Finally swallowing the excruciating bite, Sakura slammed her fist on the table.

"Have you heard a word I've said? We can't do it again! It was too weird, it wasn't like…right." At the abruptly frantic turn in her tone Ino's smirk faltered, brows shot up as she awaited further explanation. Sakura stammered to filter through her chaotic thoughts and voice them aloud for the first time. "Like…I don't know, I don't know if I liked it. I don't know if he liked it. Sex aside, the whole situation was so…"

She searched for the words to describe feelings she couldn't understand herself and found none. Nothing that could adequately express the strange mélange of guilt and regret and satisfaction she found herself beset with. No language that could capture the haunting sense that she had somehow spited her friend and betrayed his true wishes – and that she had maybe slightly enjoyed it, even.

With a great sigh, she gave up. "I don't know. I just don't think it's what he would've wanted."

"Of course it was, it's sex," Ino stated simply, shrugging.

With a loud groan Sakura dropped her forehead to the table's sticky surface. "You don't get it."

"What? Guys always like sex, it's how the world works."

"It's not that simple!"

"Oh, so you bone once and suddenly you're an expert?"

"Kinda, yeah." She raised her head from the table, brushing pink locks from her eyes to confront her friend with a stern glare. "Look, it just can't happen again. It's not possible."

Before she could fully feel the sting of this revelation, the sideways admission that their copulation had been wrong, she jumped at her friend's harsh snap of "NO!" accompanied by a joust of her spoon toward Sakura's face.

"NO!" Ino shrieked again, as if reprimanding a dog. "Are you fucking kidding me Sakura? It's one thing to screw your teammate but to have a one night stand? You can't!"

"Why not? There's no other way to fix this –"

"That won't 'fix' anything!" At the perplexed look on Sakura's face, the blonde sighed exasperatedly. "Listen, I may not be a professional slutbag like you, but even I know that one night stands between friends are never good. You see Sasuke almost every day at training – what's he gonna think if you just pretend nothing ever happened?"

As a familiar pressure built behind her eyes, Sakura hung her head, gazing at her hardly touched bowl of ice cream. "That it was a mistake," she mumbled, beginning to feel sick to her stomach.

"Exactly," Ino concurred. "That's the kind of thing that ruins friendships. So whether it was your fairytale cherry-popping or not, you have to do it again. Just so he knows you don't regret it."

Sakura flinched at the word 'regret.' That was a concept she couldn't tackle at the moment. Blinking back the tears prickling at her lashes, she asked quietly, "Are you gonna hook up with Kiba again then?"

Ino shrugged. "Who knows, if I feel like it."

"You're not worried about it 'ruining your friendship'? What if you have a mission together?"

Ino finished off her ice cream before redirecting her spoon to Sakura's lowered face. "Totally different," she stated simply. "People get over blowjobs. You two swapped virginities. That's supposed to be this beautiful moment you share with someone you wanna be with forever, 'cause whether it works out or not you're gonna remember them for the rest of your life."

Sakura said nothing, searched desperately for something to disprove her comrade's words but to her dismay found them utterly correct. Mistake or not (and she hadn't decided yet), her tryst with Naruto was not something she'd soon forget – and she expected he wouldn't either. There was no undoing it. There was no ignoring it. Again she found herself in a position where the only way to go was forward.

In her friend's determined silence, Ino probed, "Am I right or am I right?" once again punctuating her words with a flick of her spoon.

Knocking the obnoxious utensil away from her face, Sakura sighed. "Yeah, yeah, you're right. For once."

Grinning triumphantly Ino began to paw through her purse for her wallet. "Good. Now get your shit together, sweetie. You've got some seducing to do. We need to plan your next move."

Sakura groaned, head tossed skyward in frustration. "Why couldn't I have just blown him?" she whined.

Although directed to no one in particular, it was the waiter who appeared at the receiving end of this question, voiced far louder than intended. Long before Sakura could react he had dropped the check and disappeared into the kitchen with shinobi-like speed, leaving her red-faced and gaping in his wake.

Ino, kindly attempting to stifle her laughter, tucked a few bills under her bowl and stood. "Oh honey. You've gotta loosen up."

Paralyzed with embarrassment, Sakura could manage only a mortified squeak in response.

"Oh wait, I forgot – you're plenty loose already."

Satisfied with her cleverness, Ino beamed as she led the way out of the café (to which they could never return, Sakura imagined). As they departed the blonde embarked on some other banal ramble that Sakura could barely follow. Their little outing was near its end, she realized, and at the threat of impending solitude her head started to fill with all the importunate questions she'd barely avoided throughout their brunch. As if pissed that she'd tried to ignore them, every impossible inquiry seemed to resurface at once and nag at her more ferociously than ever.

"Are you doing anything now?" she asked out of the blue, hoping to prolong her distraction at least a little longer before falling prey to her ceaseless conscience.

"I told you, dumdum, I have training," Ino answered, ignorant to the disappointment these words provoked. "Speaking of: when's your next session?"

"Whenever Kakashi-sensei returns from his reconnaissance mission."

"Perfect, then you've got some time. Come to karaoke tonight. We can scheme about how to bed your boy."

"Ino –"

"Don't worry, he won't be there," Ino scoffed, rolling her eyes at her friend's transparent preoccupation. "Calm your tits. Although can you imagine Sasuke doing karaoke? I'd pay to see that."

Sakura managed a tiny chuckle, but it brought her mind no relief. Certainly Sasuke wouldn't be there. Despite his ongoing efforts to make nice with the villagers again his social appearances were few and far between – not to mention, as Ino had said, the idea of Sasuke singing was laughably improbable. But a certain blond attention whore with an apparent affinity for music, on the other hand, she wouldn't be at all surprised to run into within their inbred group of friends.

"So…who is going then?" she hedged just as their stroll terminated before the Yamanaka Flower Shop.

"I don't know, the usual flock – including you, bitch, so don't try to get out of it." As Sakura opened her mouth to do exactly that, Ino cut her off. "Or you could hole up in your apartment all night torturing yourself with your so-called morals. Take your pick."

Whatever bullshit excuse her mind had formulated disappeared before she could utter it. "I'll think about it," she conceded reluctantly, gaining her another great eye-roll from the blonde.

"Uh huh. See you at nine."

And with that she went inside, abandoning Sakura to her conscience with hours to kill before another potential distraction. She considered going to the hospital, the library, the training grounds – anywhere she could put herself to a task, however mind-numbingly tedious – but all these diversions were temporary. The fact remained that no matter how long she put it off, eventually she would need to address the situation.

But there were still so many answers she didn't have, so many feelings she didn't understand. Why had she done it? How could she fix it? What could she say or do that would save their precious friendship or at least render it reparable? And now on top of everything else she had Ino's proposition to consider: should she do it again?

The mere thought of this set her cheeks aflame as she reached her apartment, quickly darted inside as if her impure idea were somehow visible to passers-by. What the hell was wrong with her? She was mad to even consider it, hypothetically or not. There was no way it could happen again – even if she wanted it to, she thought. She had managed to rope him into it once, in 'the heat of the moment,' as Ino had said, but she doubted he would fall for it again. Not after she'd basically snubbed him and bailed. Not after she'd violated their friendship and essentially used him to appease a desire she still didn't understand. There was no way he'd go for it. Not Naruto. He simply wouldn't.

But why did this conjecture fill her heart with lead, pump her full of a heaviness she could only label…Was it disappointment? Bitterness, at a rejection that not only hadn't happened yet but that was objectively the logical ideal? And moreover, how could she decipher the sharp pang she'd felt at Ino's allusion to having slept with Kiba, the stabbing shock akin to having ice poured down her back? Jealousy? The sting of an ego robbed of a bragging right? Did that mean part of her had enjoyed the encounter – enough to do it again? – enough to want to do it again?

She hadn't even locked her door by the time her internal interrogation had kicked back into high gear. Granted, she had moved out of her parents' house to allow her more privacy, more space to think and cultivate her own life as a supposed adult; but suddenly she missed her mother's nagging bark, the menial chores that occupied otherwise idle hands. She almost contemplated paying them a visit but knew better. Not in her current state, when she could barely keep up a conversation with her girlfriend. They would definitely know something was up – and knowing her father, he would assume it involved a boy.

With a fretful sigh she glanced at the clock above her kitchen sink. Only eight and a half hours until her next distraction…