"You were right." Ino fans herself with a pamphlet that she picked up in the waiting room. "Boy were you right."
Sakura grins. She's still a little flushed. "Hey, I told you, dibs!"
Ino sighs, a bit too loudly, but she nods anyway. When they were ten, she and Sakura got a crush on the same boy and it took them two years to fix their friendship. The boy wasn't worth it, anyway. "Fine, fine. I'll give you a head start." She smirks at her best friend. "If it's clear he doesn't want you, he's fair game, though."
Sakura scowls at her. "I'm not going to throw myself at him! He'll think I'm a slut." She sighs, and rests her chin in her hands as her gaze grows thoughtful. "He looks like he has a lot of things going on in his life at the moment... I want to help him with it, I don't want to be used as a temporary distraction from it."
Ino blinks. "Sakura... You've known him a day, cool your jets a bit. I admit he's the definition of dark and handsome, but..."
"Oh, shut up, you make it sound like I'm already planning our marriage and the names of our children."
"And you aren't?"
Sakura steals Ino's pamphlet and pretends to whack her shoulder with it. The blonde is laughing too much to care.
"I bet you already know what your full name will sound like when you marry him."
Sakura reddens guiltily. Ino laughs even harder.
"Stop it, Ino-pig! You make it sound like I'm a psycho stalker or something. It's just something I've done ever since we were children, it doesn't mean anything."
Ino smirks again. "If I ask you his phone number, will you need to check wherever you wrote it?"
Sakura replies without thinking. "He doesn't have a cell phone right now, but Naruto said he could take calls on his." She pauses as Ino coughs in her hand. "Ah, stop laughing already! I had to ask for the paperwork, is all!"
"And paperwork or not, if he had given it, you would totally remember it now."
Sakura pouts and crosses her arms defensively.
Ino decides to be lenient. "I know, I know. It's not your fault you have a huge brain behind that huge forehead of yours. What was my GPA back in third grade?"
Startled by the change of subject, Sakura rattles it off automatically. Ino gives her a teasing bow.
"Haruno Sakura the Amazing Super-Brain."
"Says the super-blonde."
Ino reaches out to mess up Sakura's hair; Sakura parries hurriedly and they spend a couple of minutes batting at each other, exchanging insults and laughing. But then Ino checks the time, and gets up regretfully. The last bus is leaving soon and she doesn't want to miss it.
"...Fine, fine, you've got dibs for now," she says as she leans down to pick up her bag. "But if he falls for my considerable charms on his own, it's not my fault."
"Hah! As if that would happen! He likes women with class, I can tell." Sakura is looking around for Ino's things, which have ended up everywhere on the desk. Sakura gives out her handful without looking, absently scanning the desk.
Ino snickers. "You can keep it. You'll need it."
Sakura blinks at her, and then looks down at the pamphlet. A bright pink 'TEENAGERS : WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SAFE SEX' stares back at her.
She crumples it and throws it at her best friend's head, but Ino dodges behind the door and walks out of the hospital, laughing.
Ino steps out on the street, jacks in on her portable computer, and checks to see that she still has Naruto's number, somewhere in the mess of her hard drive. Not that she plans on calling Sasuke.
Not yet. But one of these days, she's going to make him and Sakura come with her to a dance club or something, and then, they'll see what happens. Yeah, she totally will.
Ah, whoever dates him in the end, he sure is nice to look at...