She Made Him Wait

'Today will be the day', she nervously thinks to herself.

Countless times she has trundled with unintelligible pacing across the hollow floorboards of her new apartment bedroom, ignoring the muffled chatter of the crowds on the gravelly street below. Countless hours has she spent to the sole activity of gnawing the soft and pink skin of her lower lip, racking her thoughts over a hampering topic that she has contemplated for supposed aeons, but for which she has not yet found yet an answer. Whether it is due to her reluctance or barely-founded fear is something only she knows.

She has done it almost every day for the past three weeks. If at any time her green jewels visually caress the muscled and cloth-decorated form of one of her closest friends, she later returns to her second-floor sanctum to wordlessly interrogate herself once more. Why does she keep doing it? Will she do anything about it? When will she do anything about it?

She tells herself that it has been too long. The worry in her heart says the window has closed, but the logic of her educated mind tells her that she is underestimating her target once again. He was the one who had opened the window in the first place, and he has yet to declare that the opening has been permanently locked shut.

Someone once created the phrase, 'Better late than never'. Obviously, that person was trying to cover up their own procrastinations, merely extending the opportunity to be harshly judged for their laxity and laziness. Is she in the same boat? Are the rewards of what she is intending to do enough to outweigh the sheer chasm of time that she has let swell between her and her target?

Although she knows that it has to be done eventually, her instinctual worry returns with a conundrum. He hasn't asked her out in three months…why?

Is he baiting her? Is he waiting to see if her ambition and drive have changed; that she is no longer chasing a dream that covered her eyes much like a genjutsu? The hollow thuds of her black, open-toed boots against the floor cease as she comes to the realisation of the 'eye-for-an-eye' scenario.

She had made him wait for so long, and now he is showing her how it feels.

How could it be anything else? But if that's the case, then does he know what scenarios his image conjures in her mind? Is he purposefully putting on a display, smugly displaying his belief that she would eventually look to him as something more? It was truly a mind-bending situation; but the young nineteen-year-old woman's skilled and analytic brains kicks in.

The wait she imposed upon him was forceful. She would always decline an advance or disavow any romantic possibility with the man in question. However, he is doing no such thing at this very moment. He is putting her at arm's length - deliberately or not, she doesn't know – but he is not enforcing the distance with verbal or physical restraints. That must have been the key to it all, and the young woman finally realises that the decision to act is totally up to her.

For three months…she's been making him wait again. It is he who is waiting for her to make the move.

How evil could he be to pull that kind of guilt trip on her?

That thought alone ignites and churns the embers of her recognisable frustration. However, she knows that she can't simply walk up to him, physically assault him and claim that everything is the moron's fault without a good reason. In fact, blaming him for not asking her out on a date would make her out as a deranged attention seeker…that would certainly not go down well in anybody's books; her reputation would surely be stained, and her image in his eyes would be tarnished for the long foreseeable future.

Although now aware that the decision is totally up to her, she knows herself well enough to see that while she feels as if it is an obligation, her own attitudes surrounding the subject of these internal qualms are changing like the leaves in autumn.

Her left hand rises from its purchase on her hip and deftly swipes a loose strand of her luminous, almost inhumanely coloured hair back behind her ear. As she looks up and takes in the ochre colouring of the buildings - their brickwork melding with the vibrant yellow of the sky-suspended sun - through the window before her, she sees a ghostly and opaque interpretation of herself staring back. She never meant to pull such a face, but her lowered brow and tight lip-line show that her subconscious itself is ready for business. Her body is steeling itself to undergo the first attempt of something she had never once considered performing until recently.

"No turning back now", she tells her hollow reflection before darting for the door sitting in the corner to her back and left. Halfway down the hall, she hears the latch connect to the frame behind her, and she knows now that her sanctum for searching her thoughts is closed until she next returns. She doesn't mind anymore, because each step she takes to the front of her apartment actually steels her ambition.

For today...Haruno Sakura is going to ask her long-time friend, her primary pillar of support, her saviour in dire times, her teammate…Uzumaki Naruto…for a date.


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Despite her initial jitteriness at the expectation of what she is about to do, Sakura finds herself in the middle of a very annoying, but still quite significant fact.

She can't find Naruto.

Ichiraku Ramen, Training Ground Three, the Hospital, the Hokage's office and the Hokage Monument…Naruto was nowhere near any of them, and that pushes the rosette's mind into her very-easily-accessible temper zone.

Being an addict to the stuff, his favourite ramen vendor was the first obvious choice. But all she found at the familiar establishment was an old pruning man sat before the working father-daughter pair. When asked, the both of them were solemnly negative when it came to their knowledge of their favourite customer's location.

Next was her team's original training ground; all she found were divots in the grassy plain and a strong southerly wind. Thinking with a sudden onset of enthusiasm that Naruto could have been searching for her at the same time, she had made her way to the Hospital; a thorough search of all three floors and the subtle interrogating of two nurses yielded no results.

Running out of options, she believed that he may have been harassing the Hokage for a mission…or just harassing for the sake of killing time. Much like the owners of the ramen stand, the Hokage hadn't smelled a whiff of Naruto thus far. Through desperation, she hurried up the pedestrian staircase to the top of the monument that displayed the faces of the villager's prestigious leaders, current and past, to their eyes. Unfortunately, both the natural and carved stone of the highest point in the village remain desolate, and the findings made Sakura's face burn with indignation in combination with the high-sitting sun.

Sakura's plans all suddenly appear scarpered, and so she finds herself looking for a place to vent…verbally. Focussed solely on reaching her new target destination, she doesn't care for a rather scrawny, middle-aged civilian who stares at her figure with a little too much interest, mostly because she knows that he won't have the power to do anything other than imagine. Her hips bob with her firm and rushed steps, her footfalls threatening to knock up miniature clouds of dust as her boots disturb the loose gravel of the sun-baked avenue.

The bland road, decorated in single-toned storefronts and teeming with placid shoppers makes Sakura rethink her route, but a sudden break in the dull colour scheme of the scenery twenty metres ahead brings somewhat of a wave of relief over her body. The green of her eyes swirls through the different colours of the rainbow as the reflection of a plethora of flora dance across her sclera.

In a more simple interpretation, the aforementioned blandness of the street is blemished by a vivid collection of bucket and trough-anchored flower bouquets. Sakura doesn't even have to scrutinise the entire front of the pale-yellow building to understand that it belongs to Konohagakure's most renowned clan of mind manipulators, the Yamanaka Clan. Sakura may feel a slightly pleasant sensation at seeing such a familiar landmark, but her general frustrations over the lack of finding a certain knucklehead stop her from making any sort of face to express the pleasantry.

Almost forgetting to avoid a small raised step into the building, Sakura takes in the colourful interior of the flower shop with only mild interest. What her primary focus is set upon is the counter located near the back of the store, but directly in line with the shop entrance. For once, fate decides to favour Sakura by rewarding her with the sight of a blonde, purple-clad kunoichi…even though said kunoichi's back is squarely facing her.

"Ino", Sakura says in a tone that although calm, doesn't make her sound all that pleased. What happens next, however, takes Sakura by as much as surprise as her sudden appearance does with her quarry.

The kunoichi behind the counter turns with a very obvious start, accompanied by a light gasp and an open hand coming to a stop in the centre of her chest. If there was one thing Sakura knows about Yamanaka Ino, it's that her skin has a distinctly pale complexion; but the Ino she's looking at now…is considerably red in the face. Her cheeks, nose and lips appear to accommodate a large full-face blush; that, combined with how the young woman's raised hand quickly moves to fan her face, looks to be the result of overheating.

"Oh, Sakura!" Ino's response is even more off-kilter. Her voice is loud, bordering on a shout, while she subtly – but not unnoticeably – turns her head to the side with a smile whilst maintaining a peculiar sideways eye contact. Even though she's not directly looking at it, Sakura's keen eyesight notes how her friend's free hand lightly pulls at the hem of her large, superficial skirt as if to correct it; the short black skirt underneath it provides protection of her dignity. "What are you doing here?" Even as she begins to engage in conversation, Ino's volume barely drops a decibel. Sakura, suddenly off put by her old friend's uncharacteristic attitude, narrows her eyes and tilts her head back a few degrees.

"What's wrong with you? You're acting…weird." Sakura can't put it any other way. Ino's lips spew forth a hollow laugh before she idly fans her face once again.

"Oh, this heat's been playing with my head. I'm finding it hard to concentrate." Ino does have a point, the day is still in the hours of the high sun, and there's little cloud cover decorating the vivid azure sky; indeed, Fire Country could be a hot place to live in during the warm seasons, even for natives. Although the answer could well have been the truth, Sakura can't help but feel that…something is off.

"Okay…" Sakura lets a brief pause settle before properly answering Ino's earlier question, "I've been looking for Naruto, but the idiot seems to have vanished and I can't find him anywhere…not even Ichiraku!" Sakura duly emphasises the last section of her sentence, thus indicating the sincerity of Naruto's untimely disappearance. Sakura takes Ino's whole-body freeze as an understanding of the situation's severity.

"Oh, you're looking for Naruto?" Having not been massively surprised for a second time, Ino's sudden repeated increase in volume – again, combined with her slightly turned head – tweak once again at Sakura's suspicion. Feeling her frustration rise up her body once more, Sakura's answer is straightforward.

"Yes, yes I am…" Sakura's voice trails off, and her eyes suddenly snap to a point behind the friend before her. A distant grunting noise cannily echoes out from a curved-arch doorway directly behind Ino, accompanied by the ear-churning noise of metal scraping on ceramic. From behind the right side of the doorway, the target that has eluded Sakura for almost three-quarters-of-an-hour slowly edges his way into the rosette's sight.

While Ino turns around to overlook the commotion, Sakura finds herself captivated, yet again, by the physically active body of her teammate, Uzumaki Naruto. His muscle-bound, but nevertheless athletic arms are bare, emerging from a sleeveless vest-like mock-up of the jumpsuit he so adamantly wore during his mid-teens. The top hugs the swell of his chest and dips inward to cling across his abdomen and tight back before vanishing behind the waistband of some identical black pants, decorated with dark orange flames that licked up the side seams. His skin, a deeper shade than either Sakura's or Ino's, helps greatly emphasise the reflective glints of visible sweat that paint his forehead and arms.

His face is scrunched with concentration, the source for which soon enters Sakura's eyesight with him. His hands are tightly clasped around a pair of thin, vertically set metal girders, attached to which at specific intervals are horizontal plates of thin metal that stretch across to another pair of vertical supports. Every horizontal plate appears laden with variably-sized flower pots, all housing different species of flower and in different amounts. From the masculine grunting emerging from Naruto's throat, Sakura can only imagine that the shelving unit is heavy.

"Hi, Sakura-chan…" Naruto can only look across for a few fractions of a second and harshly shoot out the greeting, mostly because he seems to be straining with the shelving rack, "…I'll…be there in a sec." Sakura doesn't see it, but Ino allows a gentle smile to grace her lips as if to demonstrate her gratefulness.

"That's fine there, Naruto. Thanks." The moment Ino gives the go ahead is the moment that Naruto lets go of the breath he had been holding for the task Ino appeared to have pitted on him. Quickly dusting his hands off, Naruto smiles to himself before turning and exposing his full figure to the two young women stood nearby. One of them nods in thanks for his actions, and the other can't resist letting her eyes drop down his body as it tapers into his waist and divides out to mould his legs. And then she takes in his face.

His eyes dazzle against his heat-reddened face; his irises, a pair of ocean-blue circles that could easily suck one in without a single ushered word. His bright and unique hair has grown out into a distinct ball of what could only be called, 'mess'. Although it has been fashioned slightly similar to the late Fourth Hokage, he has forgone the two thick bangs that curtain his sharp jaw and minutely square chin. His smile, so white and bright, is more than enough of a capable image that can raise the spirits of any person who may be on a downer.

"Ino asked me yesterday if I could…help move some big stuff in the back of the store." Naruto's thumb points back over his shoulder at the previously manned room before inquiring as to the request of his company. "I'm pretty much done now, so…what do you need me for?"

Sakura's chest tingles with anticipation upon remembering her original goal. Naruto's look seems completely reserved for her; and now, she feels that it's time to finally reward him for such attention.

"Hi…Naruto", she tries to speak with a general amount of normality, but Naruto's gaze is chipping at her sincerity. "Erm…I…just wanted to talk to you." Naruto's raising of a single eyebrow doesn't help Sakura discern whether he wants her to continue or whether he's formulating an answer. Five seconds of silence pass, and Sakura remembers that Naruto is the kind of person who takes spoken words literally. He is expecting her to start talking to him now. She can't, Ino's in the room with them, and she can begin to imagine the verbal poking she would receive from her friend and ex-rival in love.

"Err…yeah", Sakura says aloud, but to nobody in particular. In a move that openly confuses both blondes, the rosette spins on her heel and makes for the exit located behind her. Pulling a face, Naruto stands still in blatant confusion. Sakura, meanwhile, begins berating herself at her complete hollow-mindedness; she knows Naruto isn't following her, because she never told him to, and that's why her frustration starts simmering. She turns around, and sees the two of her fellow academy graduates silently staring at her with expressions of clear misunderstanding. Suddenly, she sternly points at the floor next to her, and raises her voice in a manner not unfamiliar to either of the other teens.

"Well, come on!" Like someone who has been lost to a daydream, Naruto suddenly shakes free of his reverie and briefly stumbles to follow, an action similar to his younger and more childish years. Sakura prematurely leaves the building, leaving it up to Naruto to follow her.

Exiting the shop, Sakura breaks left and walks for a few metres before turning back around to find Naruto only just making his way into the daylight. He slowly transitions into trotting at a leisurely pace towards her, but he can see the way in which the ball of Sakura's foot thoroughly taps against the ground. She doesn't mean to suddenly act so callous, but her inability to retain her desire to ask her planned question makes it harder for her to wait for the moment. In fact while her mind is telling herself to calm down, her eyes subsequently shut down and fail to process the large and calloused hand that flies from left to right and back again across her face.

"Sakura-chaaan…" Just hearing his voice say her name in a deep and curious tone knocks away her mind's control of her concentration. Although she doesn't physically shake her head, she looks back at Naruto, who has since increased his height lead over the medic to six inches, with wide and semi-dazed eyes. She locks on to his sapphire irises and can somehow feel that supernatural pull, but she knows that the real meat of her dilemma has yet to be exposed.

"Sorry, I was just thinking." She's actually thinking more about the significance of Naruto being in the Yamanaka's flower shop. He very rarely went in there, and flowers weren't his true forte. Then again, he said that Ino had asked him to help, and she knows that a friend in need would have no trouble getting assistance from the selfless Uzumaki Naruto. Speaking of selflessness, Naruto – still stood in front of Sakura - continues to keep his mouth shut as he waits for Sakura to start talking. She was the one who had wished to begin the conversation, and as such he had no problem with holding back his own chat material until Sakura had gotten hers out of the way. Oh, how thoughtful of him; he's only gone and maintained a large span of awkward silence without even knowing it. Idiot…

Now is the time that Sakura's original feelings of anxiousness turn into dread and pessimism. She told herself that today is going to be the day, and she has created the perfect window with which to make her decision to act a reality. Just as she has the perfect opportunity, her mind tells her that things can't all be the way they seem, and that something will inevitably go wrong. Why can't she be cut some slack?

"Say, Naruto…" The sentence begins, but Sakura trails off after saying her teammate's name due to the sudden flock of butterflies fluttering inside her stomach. She was always so used to asking out her other teammate when they were younger, but that was when she had no true grasp of the significance of love and romance, how it was a bond to be cherished and not a competition to nab a trophy boyfriend. Sakura definitely understands the significance at this moment, and the fact that she's now taking the seriousness of her decision into account makes her want to take her time.

"I've…got the day off today, so…" Her eyes sink to the left of Naruto's feet, and her age-old nervous habit of stroking her forearm returns. Naruto, meanwhile, simply tilts his head to the side in mixed display of patience and partial expectation. Yet again, he doesn't know how uncomfortable he's making this for Sakura; the way he's looking at her with every ounce of his attention doesn't allow her any time to compose herself.

"I was…wondering…wondering if you…" Her eyes snap up and then away again, if only just to see if his own give away what's running through his mind. Lo and behold, he's standing there with the look of a puppy, completely oblivious to what's going on and waiting for the matter to be spelled out.

"Would you like to…go and get some ramen? I mean…the guys at Ichiraku said they haven't seen you so far today and…" Sakura begins to hopelessly drabble on and on to cover up the fact that she has just asked Uzumaki Naruto to eat with her. Before her hollow reasoning can carry on, Sakura finds herself cut off by a small chuckle. She looks up, and is surprised to find Naruto stepping up to her, his chest barely a foot away from the swell of her breasts.

"Haruno Sakura, are you asking me out?" His smile widens cheekily. Now Sakura feels the pressure, how does Naruto have her pegged so quickly? That's not fair, the discovery of her invitation shouldn't be so easy, and so Sakura tries to downplay the matter.

"N-No! Well…not really…" She knows she's lying, but she doesn't want Naruto to think that the situation is as simple as she's trying to make it, "It's just that…we haven't talked properly for a while, and I don't want us to drift apart." Finally looking back up, prepared to face the music, Sakura watches Naruto nod in understanding. All of a sudden, she realises that her past pessimism was probably unneccessary; why would Naruto, of all people, turn down an invitation to a bowl…or six…of ramen? If somebody were to cut him, he would probably bleed a brown broth instead of blood. Naruto looks off to his side, his smile suddenly flipping, which in turn puts Sakura on edge.

"If it were any other day, Sakura-chan, I would have said 'yes'." Sakura's face instantly drops. No way…what does he mean by 'any other day'?

"Thursday's my big solo training day; I'll be at the training ground practicing my more…widespread damage techniques. I don't want anybody else to be there in case I mess something up." Sakura wants to kick herself, how could she have picked the exact same day that would have meant rejection? Then again, her time apart from Naruto has made her lose touch with his timetable and thus she has nobody to blame but herself for her bad timing. Not one to give up so easily, Sakura pushes once more.

"Well, how about after that? I'm okay with waiting." Her hands join together behind her back, making her body open and, somehow, look more innocent.

"Sorry, Sakura-chan; I'll be there until night-time, and I usually end up tiring myself out. I'll probably head straight back to my apartment and hit the sack." Woe washes over Sakura like an upturned bucket of water, while she could understand Naruto's wish to rest after a hard training session, did he have to totally blow her off? Couldn't he have made a small gap in his timetable to accommodate time with his teammate, not to mention the girl he had chased for seven years? She was about to ask exactly that, bar the 'chasing the girl' stanza, but Naruto was already walking past her.

"Don't fret, I'll look for you tomorrow, we can make something happen." Although Naruto sounds cheerful, Sakura can't help but identify a lack of panache and…proper feeling in his tone; but as she tries to respond, she hears the crunching gravel under his feet die away as he walks off.

Left to stand on her own in the middle of the sparse crowd, Sakura tries to figure out exactly what just happened. In essence, Naruto declined her request of - what she weakly denied wasn't - a date, and said he'd seek her out to rearrange. Even so, Sakura doesn't understand why his timetable seems so full up for the next approximate nine hours. Surely, in all of that time, there could be a small window in which she could be the centre of Naruto's attention; but no, his entire schedule for the day consists of training and sleeping. That may have been the semi-typical Naruto of three years ago, but the medic is sure that he'd have to eat at least once or twice. Because of her scepticism, Sakura wants to at least insist once again later in the day, but part of her doesn't want to interrupt Naruto at the risk if him getting annoyed at her.

And so she decides there and then that if she can't get a full and normal catch-up session with him for the day, then she would try something a little more extreme when he was tired out at the end of his training. It would certainly grab his full attention, but it probably won't make him regret turning her down now. With a small nibble at her lower lip, she heads at a gentle pace in the general direction of her apartment with a plan in mind; a plan involving the forecasted full moon, a quiet and crater-laden training ground, a tired, sweaty shinobi…and some very interesting medical skills.

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This time, Sakura knows exactly what she's doing.

She's heading for her team's training ground for the second time today, this time under the darkness of the clouds that are banishing the moon's charming, soothing veneer of transparent white silk from touching the grass beneath her shoes. She knows fully well that Naruto will be there…covered in sweat…tired…likely to be missing his jacket and underlying fishnet…his body looking so ragged and physically magnetising that she would have no choice but to force submission from both him and it with certain techniques.

Finally, she's grown up and opened her eyes. At last, she has seen just what has become of that which she had chased so adamantly for year after year. To love a killer and traitor birthed so many horrible 'what if' consequences pertaining to what would have happened if he had accepted her. Surely the village would throw her into disrepute; the Hokage may have relieved her of her apprenticeship, and possibly swapped her for someone with 'greater inclination to support the village and not one fallen man'. What of any children? Would they be mocked and scolded as the children of a violent traitor? Would they feel what Naruto had suffered through his independent upbringing?

Now, she pays no more attention to those fleeting thoughts. She is a woman that knows what she wants. Only one person had truly supported her at every turn, never raising a hand or displaying his back in defiance nor revolt; not once would he move to strike her like she had to him for so long. Finally, six years down the line, she has no doubt as to what her life needs in order to become complete and woe-free.

Naruto had already been hers for a long time, no doubt about it. And at last, she would willingly be his.

The flaring of her hormones, the swell of her chest and the tingle below her stomach as her eyes cascaded over her teammate's form earlier in the day only sought to drive her impatience. She could wait no longer. She was finally ready to commit herself to him, knowing all too well that he was already doing so with himself untoward her. Every step against the ground drove her closer to what she truly felt would become her future in peace and, most importantly, love.

Two hundred metres from the treeline, she only hears her footsteps. The smacking of her boot soles against naturally smooth tree limbs becomes the only hint of her presence. Her speed, slightly rushed in comparison to any other calmly moving, tree hopping shinobi, forces a rush of mild summer air into her ears. To the pink-haired beau, it's like she is sat on a beach: a cool breeze knocking the unruly bangs out of her face, and the sound of the ocean waving over her eardrums. It's such a calming feeling, and it seems to be such an appropriate scene-setter considering how she's planning to talk to her blonde knucklehead.

One hundred metres away from the clearing of the training ground: A deep, but oddly quiet humming sound makes itself known for but a second. Sakura notices the noise, but cannot identify a cause or a source. She sees no need to sidetrack her current objective, and so she pushes onward.

Fifty metres later, she hears the same sound. A deep and hoarse drone, a by-product of physical exertion, rings through the dense wood ahead of her. This time, she doesn't need extra data, for the source is the object she is eagerly seeking out. It's his voice, projecting the uncomfortable nature and sensation of his training-induced aches and pains. Sakura has never expected anything less, which is the reason for the tender smile that quickly graces her smooth, cream-tinted face. If Naruto felt no pain, then there certainly wouldn't be any gain; ergo, he would constantly push until he could move no further. Such dedication was to be admired, not just in its application of his training, but also in his attempts to capture her heart.

It doesn't matter to Sakura that Naruto's last invite for a date was more than three months ago, most likely because it was the last time she was going to say 'no' to him, she's more than confident that he's still waiting for her. As far as she has seen to this day, the glint in Naruto's eyes never appears whenever his gaze falls upon another female; it's a look solely reserved for her, his Cherry Blossom. Simply awarding herself the title in her head makes her feel giddy and it urges her to push off another limb with renewed anxiety.

The same hoarse tone rattles through the wooded plain, gruff and - ironically enough - still full of energy. Naturally, the hyperactive one in her group of friends happens to be the one with endless stamina. She smiles brightly, but what shyness she has breaks through as she looks down, observing as the branches pass below her in thin lines of brown and black, and the grass beneath that seemingly lost in a bottomless pit of darkness.

Thinking with some amount of tact, she decides that breaking straight out into the open and interrupting his training would be a dampener on her opportunity. She was ready to admit to herself that his body was a positive to the negative of her eyes, attracting and magnetising her gaze to his shining skin, coated in a veneer of his sweat. To watch from the bushes as that body moves with practiced fluidity and conditioned suppleness would be a sight that any woman would have a hard time forgetting. Sakura should know, she may have passed the blonde off for so long, but now she was struggling to forget his statue of a physique.

It was nothing like Sasuke's. No, his was pale, with very few detailing dips and lines of any muscle. If one had never heard of the Uchiha before, their initial thought would be that his body was weak, and thus would assume the same about his skill. They would be dead before their brain could comprehend that he had already moved behind them in an almost unrivalled burst of speed and run them through.

Naruto, on the other hand, had a light tan that brought out his exuberant hair and sharp eyes of bright sapphire. As if it were divine intervention, he had been graced with a body that showed off his lean build, the bulges of his muscles drawing thin lines of shadow over his skin like a calligraphy brush, but was nowhere near powerful enough to overwhelm the eyes. It's no wonder that he's started to get some not-so-secret admirers.

But Sakura has one up on those 'newcomers': They don't know Naruto like she does, and that's one of the greatest advantages she can have. To understand and possess deep knowledge of the one that somebody admires, or even desires, can bring one closer than any other.

She sees the wood thin out ahead of her, like a black doorway retracting and breaking its resistance to the brightening night sky. It's so peaceful, so quiet, so…un-Naruto like that it feels like his appearance would ruin the setting.

'On the contrary', Sakura muses, 'Naruto is often the one setting the scene anyway.' Her stomach is quivering and her breathing is shaky. She's not dreaming at all, she's really doing this; and as much as she wonders why, she doesn't want to stop. He's wanted her for so long, even after all the beatings, all the harsh words, all the torment…the confession…and he has never pushed her; he's just…waited, waited to see what will become of them. She has made this decision of her own accord, the decision to discover exactly what she has missed out on for the past number of years.

Sakura's head is suddenly irrigated of wishes and 'what ifs', her mind immediately becomes focused on the now…all because she hears another moan. This time, however, it's a loud…smooth…high-pitched moan.

A woman's moan.

Before Sakura knows it, she's feeling the soft, cropped grass brush against her exposed toes as she falls to terra firma and kneels in complete silence. If this were training for an assassination, her potential target has no chance of hearing her. Her brow is knit in concentration, and her eyes narrow as they lock on the clearing twenty metres ahead. The black curtain ahead of her, devoid of light, turns to dark blue as the bodies of vapour hanging above the forest begin to thin out, waiting for the correct moment to reveal the silver orb overlooking the land. She creeps with caution and anxiety as the brush loses its lush density.

Why is her stomach feeling so strange? Putting aside the fact she had just daydreamed of initiating some more-than-friendly contact with the jinchuuriki not three minutes ago, she suddenly feels restrained, nervous…worried. Where did this second voice come from? Who was it? Why was it there?

She cycles the question around her brain over and over, wishing that she knows, or has the means to find out. But it's then that she realises: Naruto has the ability – to her, a curse - of the Oiroke no jutsu.

Of course, it's likely that he's moved on to something less physically demanding; practicing his self-taught seductive techniques, the very same that could stain the gleaming white robes of the Sandaime red with his own nasal discharge.

Although Sakura disapproves of the technique, 'disapprove' meaning 'beat-the-ever-loving-snot-out-of-Naruto-for-using-it', she knows he always strives to better it when he has the time…and the privacy. She smiles jokingly to herself as her eyes grace over the tickly blades of green growth passing beneath her boots. Perhaps she's becoming too analytical; honestly, it shouldn't be anything to worry about.

Ten metres to go: The dark blue becomes a slowly illuminating violet. The light of the celestial body above them punches needle holes through the fluffy cloud line, polka-dotting the land around her like landing fireflies. This would certainly be a scene for her to remember. Such tranquillity, such harmlessness, and such peace…it's all so beautiful, and a sight that she feels has to be shared with another.

Sakura knows the voice of the female Naruto, squeaky, laced with what's meant to be charm…and it most certainly isn't the airy, breathy, deeply feminine tone creating the words that hit the treeline, flooding past it and into any ears that lay beyond.

"So…so good…"

The only evidence of Sakura's gasp is through her nose, her lips suddenly tightening in an attempt to decrease her volume. She's beyond curious now…just what on Earth is going on? She takes one step forward, and one to the right, hoping to peek around a wide tree trunk sat not five metres from the clearing. She feels the grating texture of the age-old wood under her fingers, using it as both her anchor and support as she turns and sticks her back to its curved shape. A step to the left, and she sees the bushes marking the border of the plain, another step has a dark, thin silhouette of a leg peek out from behind the rest of the tree.

She may not see everything at the moment, but the figure the leg belongs to must only be around eight metres away from her. The next step to the left becomes the last, because the pair of bare, muscular and hair-peppered legs she can see is joined by two smooth, slightly-glossed and rounded limbs ended by two petite feet. The additional body parts are angled forward from their owner's hips, supported by mud-painted knees from which pale but solid calves extend back, parallel to their equals inside of their spread position.

Her eyes follow up the fully exposed skin of the person who is definitely not her teammate. The tops of the mystery legs widen as they move up and meld into the pelvis to which they are permanently attached. Sakura can only watch the back of these unknown thighs curve without any flawed seam into the two rotund and completely naked quarter-spheres of the unidentified addition's rear…one half of which is being confidently grasped between spread, equally tanned fingers that bend to claw the mound into their possession. The soft flesh gives under the grip, creating a new miniature range of hills across the skin that slips between the complacent appendages.

Sakura can't move, she can't speak…she can't even breathe. She's so close, close enough to hear his rugged breathing, close enough to see the rising and falling of his inclined chest, close enough to hear the smacking sound created by the movement of his lips…close enough to see a bridge of saliva connecting them to…to…

"You really like them, don't you?" The voice from before speaks down to the body below it, like a mother figure looking down to a body they are nursing; somehow…Sakura partially recognises the voice, but the situation its owner is in makes a proper confirmation unreliable for the time being. The breath behind the voice is harsh, giving it an audible mixture of gruffness and tiredness. The response is minimal, but it is still a response nonetheless. A deep but gentle hum is birthed from the totally unrestrained chest of the anonymous woman.

"I love them." That familiar masculine tone speaks in honesty and without any restrained enjoyment…or lust. The voice is silenced as a previously hidden hand tangles its fingers into his hair and pulls him back toward the visible round, fleshy globes that he had spoken of so fondly. Another light moan reaches back to the treeline and latches onto their uninvited guest's ears.

Sakura cannot believe a single word she hears or any action she sees, she knows she has happened upon something whose memories should only ever be shared by two people; but the simple fact that the spiked, messy hair and gruff, coarse tone belongs to the young man who had denied her a date mere hours ago is enough to steal away her common sense's option of leaving him to his…ministrations. Sakura feels a tightening in her chest, such as would be felt in a moment of fear, and akin to the feeling of finding out one had just performed an action that would earn them a criminal record.

'This can't be Naruto.' Is the wish that floods her brain, but she knows better than to doubt in the face of irrefutable facts; facts such as the markings on the male's face and how they bend what little amount of light there is, and the tell-tale, sleeveless vest that lies in a crumpled pile near his head…forgotten, much like the other six items of clothing that sit discarded close by. The only nearby evidence that any clothes have actually been worn sits orbiting the bitch's waist; a dark looking piece of soiled material that sits scrunched above her lower half, the protrusion of her rear end denying what Sakura can discern as a skirt from falling and covering her…below-the-belt assets.

The final blow comes as the...whore…pushes her quarry flat onto his back by his shoulders and leans down to push her entire body flush against him…

…Except her hips, which rise up and slightly forward, ready to fully lavish in the feeling of what she had earlier claimed was 'so good'.

Sakura has a metaphorical front row seat. She's hoping to any God that the pair's bareness has not progressed as far as she had initially feared, but it appears that she is simply hiding amongst the wood to witness more upsetting - yet memory-creating - sights. She feels the sting of rampant, restricted tears stabbing at her lower eyelids as she clearly sees the extent to which these two have united.

The very organ that truly deems him a man stands firm, snugly accommodated halfway into the hollow, warm cavern that the woman was so easily allowing him to feel. Even with the low lighting, the onlooker stands in upset awe at the glistening of her quarry's hardened skin, lathered by the natural lubricant that lines the inside of the slut's genital passage. The sight, for Sakura, is damning to her feelings, and yet she can't look away; the sheer eroticism has her held like the north and south of a pair of magnets.

The woman's hips descend, engulfing more of the young man's length. Sakura can only watch with utter helplessness as her teammate's flesh vanishes inch by inch inside his…lover…even though the rosette is incredibly reluctant to call her that. As the top of the woman's opening reaches Naruto's small patch of pubic hair, her moan expands outward in all directions without an echo. Sakura makes out the light hisses of a whisper, but her attention is swiftly drawn back to the bitch's pelvis as it rises once again, even as her naked chest still remains welded to that of the man below her.

There's no pause this time, and the woman drops herself the moment her height peaks. She moans once more, a breath makes her unintelligible drone sound grainy, but the pleasure she experiences can somehow be understood from it. She rises yet again, still keeping her body parallel to the man inside her, and Sakura sees that the woman is now supported by not one, but two greedy hands grasping at her rear, assisting her path and manipulating her force. The cycle of rising and falling continues, and soon the long moans are replaced with short breaths with intermingling squeals, and within seconds they become part of a duet with the deep, but not overly enraptured groans of the man who repeatedly pushes her down upon his erection.

Despite the bittersweet taste of the union that fitted her own agenda, Sakura takes a moment to look upon the scene with mild professional selfishness. Even from the great Tsunade, Konohagakure's most talented medic-nin of the previous generation, Sakura has only been taught the theory of sexual relations through words, illustrations and the occasional self-exploration. Never has she seen the raw act, even in such disgustingly beautiful detail.

A new movement breaks her contemplations. The pinned male brings his feet in towards himself, forcing his knees to bend up to the slowly-dissipating clouds. Sakura assumes the action is to support the harlot sat atop him. Although not the actual reason, it is partly true. The next few sounds from the woman aren't moans or mewls…they're full-on screams.

His bent knees give Naruto the leverage to lunge his hips up, forcing his manhood upward, stuffing the woman whose lower cheeks he's possessively clamping. Every time their pelvises meet, the woman's end is pushed further into the air, the sheer force of her lover's thrusts being easily demonstrated by her passionate recoil.

Sakura finally detaches her back from the tree that is beginning to support almost her entire weight and turns to fully face the sight. With brow crooked upward and hands dead still, she takes one cautious step, and then another. She's now three metres from the clearing, six from the coital couple, but a waist-high border of shrubberies blocks her from total sight. She doesn't dare move closer, and forces herself to kneel in the soft greenery below her, using the lush hedges to blanket all but her eyesight.

She looks back up after having found her placement and finds that Naruto has pushed himself onto his knees, body totally upright, which makes the position of his partner all the more enticing. The connected duo has now been placed in a position that gives Sakura a good profile view directly from their right.

"Oh, God…you're…ah…!" Naruto's hands still eagerly clamp to the woman's round ass, while she herself has her arms wrapped behind his neck; one hand fisting the back of his hair, the other circling to behind the opposite shoulder. Her legs hang wide apart on either side of the man supporting her, inviting him to bury himself inside her sacred channel. Their cheeks rub together in a somewhat loving embrace that definitely does not reflect the sexuality of their real connection. Like before, the woman seems to have no say in her movements; the commanding grip on her buttocks pulls her into his pelvic gyration, once again forcing his erection deep into her body. The result has her forming sentences that are cut off by the next thrust, reducing her verbal limitations to nothing but lustful grunts and yelps.

Sakura's goal to identify the tramp, founded by her disbelief and internal lividness, becomes scrapped as she hears her teammate…her loyal teammate and friend…spew a mirrored taunt at his lover's ear through a breathy, intimidating growl.

"And you love…this…don't you?" He emphasises the pronoun, 'this', with a severe thrust, pulling the woman's posterior towards him as he jointly forces himself inside her with a single thrust of unrivalled power and speed before returning to a complacent rhythm. Sakura's shock rapidly swells and is easily demonstrated by her upturned brow and parted lips. The woman cries towards the heavens as she feels her passage fill with the solid flesh, the air she gains from her gasps is swiftly stolen from her lungs as she tries to desperately answer.

"Ye-es! I want it so mu-uch…" Her speech breaks apart under the force of Naruto's continued penetrations, the sheer strength of which disrupts the airflow through her vocal chords. From Sakura's viewpoint, the heads of the lovers break apart and sumptuously stare one another down, all while their bodies shake from rattled breaths and rhythmic hip gyrations, before their lips rapidly collide.

Sakura is close enough to hear the slippery smacking of their saliva against one another, to see the rapturous curling of the woman's toes…close enough to catch the glistening veneer of sexual discharge covering Naruto's manhood. It's an organ that Sakura is just starting to become curious about, but not on any man, though; she only wished to dedicate her imagination to how Naruto's phallus may have been designed. Seeing its thick outline, its status as 'broken in' defined by the juices painting its surface, Sakura finds her brain switching off and dedicating her mind to what the piece of flesh could do.

"Harder…" The woman groans, what looks to be her waist-length hair flows freely out and back in with perfect timing against the sensual and lusted pounding of its owner's vagina. Naruto lets off a nasal grunt as he takes brief pauses during his extractions before forcing himself as deep as he can go using all the energy he can willingly spare. The only sign of Sakura's building, but nonetheless reluctant arousal is the gliding of her tongue across her upper lip, the retraction of the wet appendage parts her mouth, allowing deep, hungering breaths to escape. Fortunately for her, the increase in volume of the couple before her keeps her own growing pants of lust secret.

"Harder…fuck me harder…" The vehemence behind the begging voice is contrasted by its fragile tone. Contrary to the order, Naruto stops, but the woman engulfing him is too concerned in regaining her stolen breath to start complaining. The sudden onset of silence sends shivers down Sakura's spine as she rapidly tries to supress her hormonal venting, the fear of being caught suddenly reigniting in her mind. Before she can tidy her thoughts and begin to comprise an escape plan, a muffled thud reaches her location, causing her to look up.

Naruto, still on his knees, is suddenly looming over his partner as she lies flat on her back. Sakura can see the silhouette of the woman's chest rising and falling at speed; it makes her suddenly wonder, from out of nowhere and without any real reason, how she would be fairing if she were the one in this situation. On top of that, the couple are no longer joined, and Naruto's full erection continues to stand proud. The lower lip of the couple's uninvited guest slips under her upper teeth, a testament to her attempted suppression of desires as she looks at his rigid length. Seeing it even without full light makes her wonder what could be done to her, and it makes her aware of an uncomfortable shift of fabric occurring at the base of her shorts.

Before her thoughts can progress into the acts themselves, she suddenly witnesses a side of Naruto that even she has very rarely - if ever - seen. With a workman's grunt and very little grace, Naruto's right hand reaches for the right side of the woman's hip while his left grabs behind her right knee; he forces her onto her side none-too-lightly and props her leg over his left shoulder, straddling its floor-bound twin. Only then does Sakura realise that the woman is now directly facing the tree line in which she is hiding.

"You really are a dirty girl," Naruto growls as he takes short steps on his knees back up her body. All he gets - and what Sakura hears - in response is a light mewl of humility. Just as the dominant half of the coupling re-enters the half that so freely invites him, Sakura duly notices the silvery glow of the sun's opposite through the slowly-vanishing cloud cover. Another moan pulls the rosette's eyes away from the gradually-unveiled sky, directing her gaze to a scene that inch by inch is revealed to the moon's scrutiny.

Finally, she sees the vividness of Naruto's hair mixed with the dull white of the moonshine; at last, she can admire the unobstructed view of her teammate's chiselled physique. Now, she can prepare to fully appreciate just what makes up Uzumaki Naruto, but she can't help but submit to the pain of discovering that Naruto is having sex and, dare she think it, relations with another woman. The shadow of the cloud steadily rescinds, and Naruto's tanned skin; his chest, his arms, his stomach…all bounce the lunar luminosity back toward wet jade eyes, allowing them to fill in the puzzle of just what sat underneath his clothing. However, as the dark blanket peels away from the horizontally jumping hips of the pleasure's recipient, Sakura finds her breath lodging in her throat.

The crumpled and scrunched remains of the skirt hugging the woman's waist - that could once be almost be mistaken for a low-spectrum grey or plain black - is revealed to be a vivid purple. Even though Sakura notes this, she's far too captivated by the now-visible pumping of her teammate's erection inside the woman's weeping canal of lust to pay it too much attention. The details she can see from her current distance are quite overwhelming. The way the dancing and meandering blood vessels under his skin makes his organ darker than the rest of his body, and how the runoff of the woman he drives into makes the organ shine like a polished baton brings the discernible feeling of uncomfortable stickiness between the involuntary voyeur's legs to the forefront of her mind.

Her deep breathing returns, and is followed by a combat-tempered hand that snails from the side of her stomach and down to the waistband of her shorts. She's lucky to realise that the moonlight now has her in its high sights as well, and reflexively drops her shoulders closer to the ground, using her free left hand to support herself. But as she prepares to piggyback on the pleasurable sights ahead of her through the semi-obstructive leaves dividing it and her eyes, a bright curtain, similar in colour to Naruto's hair, flashes into Sakura's line of sight. The few millimetres that her eyes move fire the most hampering, shocking and upsetting scene thus far towards her.

One tear that had previously been restrained breaks away from her widened eyelids and trickles down her cheek, the only true sign of distress as the rosette powerlessly watches the gaping jaw, the semi-bared teeth, the unbound long white-blonde locks and tightly-shut eyes…of her best friend, the one whose flower shop in which she had found Naruto helping.

But now Sakura wonders one thing: How was Naruto helping before she arrived?

"G-god!" The rapture-laced voice that Sakura once had on the tip of her tongue becomes easily identified once its owner's face is exposed to the hidden kunoichi. Despite the absence of the girl's biggest feature - which, to Sakura, was the large mass of hair that sat over and obstructed at least half of her face – her pointed chin, the gentle curve of her cheekbones and just the colour of her hair in general is enough for Sakura to disavow the possibility that this person - whom she had adamantly labelled 'a whore' in her head mere minutes before - could be anybody else.

Uzumaki Naruto is having ardent, heavy, unprotected sex…with Yamanaka Ino.

Every thrust of Naruto's hips captivates Sakura's eyes, and she can't fight back against her inadvertent hormonal response as it makes her watch his penis sink deep inside her best friend. Soon enough, the only thing the woman he is pleasuring can do is mindlessly moan for every time her lover plunders her body, her mentality now completely dedicated to expressing, and further begging for, unending sexual pleasure.

To Sakura, every scream feels like a laugh in her face, a two-faced sound of mockery. She and Ino had regularly talked about prospective romantic partners, and what was Ino's reply?

"I haven't got anybody right now, but I haven't really been looking, either. Nobody's jumped out at me as of late."

She said those words two weeks ago.

Before her mind can revert back to its state of logical thinking, Sakura jumps at the feeling of feather light caresses against the apex of her legs. She briefly looks down, and finds her fingers slowly snaking back and forth across the fabric settling directly over her own protected - but dampening nevertheless - lower lips, all completely against her conscious will. Sakura knows her body, and she may suck her closed lips between her teeth all she wants, but even the tiny tickling sensation that dances around her covered clitoris makes her mind sink to the more primal areas of human thought.

Her…friend's…rapidly-increasing moans only help to sink her mind further into the gutter. She looks up, but the way in which the side of Ino's body scrapes against the ground with every thrust that fills her and her breasts jump against gravity only makes her want to give in…right at the spot upon which she is kneeling.

Just as Sakura pulls her exploring hand up to start flicking at the waistband of her shorts, the name of her original target of the night is screamed across the grassy plain, the echo of the cry dancing between the trees. Her attention caught once more, Sakura continues to watch in silence.

With a hoarse groan, Naruto pushes his body forth once more, but he keeps himself fully buried inside his lover, still holding her leg close to his chest and over his shoulder. Ino's volume decreases, but the high pitched vocalisations of her residual feelings of pleasure remain. Sakura, however, does not have such experienced knowledge of this, being a virgin herself.

A minute disguised as an eternity passes and Naruto looks to be keeping himself welded to his partner, but a heavy sigh escapes his lips and links in with the slow withdrawal of his hips.

Sakura's stomach suddenly starts to burn as the very definition of Naruto's passion is fully exposed to the light; the reddened, bulbous, curved and shining head drips with a semi-translucent, viscous fluid that impacts without a splash against the smooth skin of the grounded leg beneath it. Begin to admire and fantasise she may, but the happy sighs of different octaves from the post-coital couple distract her to the point of frustration. She finds herself craving some kind of similar feeling, but when she sees Naruto's pale essence trickle from between Ino's swollen lips like sap from an aging tree, her anger returns at the wordless possessiveness her friend is exhibiting over the substance.

She can't watch anymore, she can no longer sit without the ability to act while her two closest friends engage in such filthy yet heavily arousing acts. She can't handle the gloats that the images of Ino's tired, sexually-satisfied body fire in her direction, even while the offending seductress is totally unaware of her transgressions. In her wake, Sakura leaves a sensual and almost romantic lip connection punctuated by a wrestling of tongues as she turns and mindlessly paces away.

"You're amazing…" She hears the faint words of the flower fanatic brush against her ears like a gentle coastal breeze. Like the straw that broke the camel's back, just the complimentary words on their own force Sakura to shut her eyes, desperately trying to hold back the emotions that her mind – now returning to normalcy – unwillingly bring to the forefront of her upset. Looking back once more, if only to analyse she is a safe distance away, she silently leaps into the shadow-veiled trees, ready to return to her apartment and rack her mind in saddened seclusion. The only evidence of her ever being there are two blades of grass, each with a single droplet of water hanging from their tips.