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Ino pushed her way into the Hyuga apothecary shop and was greeted by an overwhelming smell of rosemary and some sort of spicy salve. The walls were neatly lined with bottles of dried herbs from the Hyuga gardens as well, and some medicinal flowers that her own family sold to them to dry, powder, and use in their remedies.
The sun coming through the window was dimmed by a magic shield that was putting a light hue on it so that the glow of the sun didn't damage any of the product. There was a faint sound of bubbling coming from behind the counter as products were actively being made in between customers.
The Hyuga family had been the go-to for potions, tinctures, and cures for many years. Ino's family had always had a relationship with the Hyuga family for supplies, so she had always had a relationship with Hinata, who she was grateful to see with an apron on and her hair tied back behind the counter.
Ino had always adored Hinata. She was sweet, polite, and pretty, and she had skipped the annoying phase that she had painfully gone through herself as favorable to boys as possible… and then girls when she got a little older.
Hinata had worked hard over the past couple of years to get the certifications that required her to run the front of the shop. Despite all her work, she had unfortunately got it the same year her sister had, even though she was five years younger than her, but Ino still thought it wasn't an accomplishment nonetheless. Hinata had done more wide-ranging studying, so she was more equipped for a wider range of ailments and recommendations in her opinion.
Ino came to the counter and leaned on it, waiting for Hinata to notice that she was there. She was carefully weighing out her ingredients and placing them in small glass containers for her next recipe. When she turned her head, she jumped, nearly dropping the jar in her hand, but she quickly put it down instead.
Ino giggled.
“I'm sorry I didn't hear you come in.” Hinata blushed deeply. So easily embarrass. Cute.
Ino tilted her head, letting her long hair fall to the side. “You look like you were into it. What are you making?”
“Uh…” Hinata glanced down at the collection of herbs. “I'm just doing some restocking. This is a tea for joint pains. A lot of elderly clients prefer it over salves or more aggressive potions that have side effects.” She explained as she collected all of her ingredients together onto a tray and slid it to the side. “Did you come in here looking for something today?”
“I came in here looking for you,” Ino told her with a smile. “I got my hands on a potion recipe that I want to try, and I want to get it right so I don't you know poison myself or something…” She dug into her pocket and realized that she didn't have any… oh yeah. She dug down into her purse to pull out the slip of paper and slid it across the counter.
Hinata picked it up and opened it. “Love potion? Those are illegal.” She blinked at her.
Ino reached over the table to point below it. “It's not actually a love potion, read the fine print.” She tapped. “It doesn't make someone else fall in love with you. It just reveals to you who your true love is.”
Hinata pressed her lips together into a line. It was clear that she was skeptical of it. She brought her eyes back to the paper, scanning down it, reading it carefully. “There's nothing in here that's innately dangerous, but… the active ingredient is a magic element powder.”
“That means it potentially works, right?” Ino prodded.
“I guess…” Hinata looked over her shoulder, scanning the ingredient wall behind her. “Nothing else in here has the potential to be dangerous, and the active ingredient is in such a small amount that I don't think that there would be much more of a side effect than the ingredient would have normally. I just…”
“So it's not dangerous?” Ino pulled out of that. Hinata was a chronic overthinker and probably the opposite of what she would call a risk-taker. “Or illegal.”
“No… I don't think so.” Hinata puffed.
“Can you make it for me?” Ino brought our hands back to her chest and held them together to beg.
Hinata still had an unsure look on her face. “I guess, I just don't understand how we know that this isn't just a hallucination.” She placed the paper down and pointed at the active ingredient. “What this does at its base form, before adding any other elements, is cause a hallucination. Now, many potions that use it force you to see certain things like memories, but it can also be used as a trick to show you what you want rather than whatever a 'true love' is.”
“You see, that's the great part,” Ino told her. “So what it is supposed to do is visually show you your true love and how you know it's your true love and not just what you want to see is that they see you too.” Hinata blinked at her, surprised. “That's possible, right?” She prodded.
“In theory.” Hinata agreed, leaning her hands down on the table and twisting them together. “There are potion combinations that use the natural soul blinds that we all have to create reactions across siblings or bonded pairs, but I've never heard of it being used for a non-bonded pair.”
“I think true love is a sort of bonding.” Ino flicked her hand out, pleading her case.
“That's widely believed, but I'm not sure how much evidence there is for it to be able to be used in something like this.” Hinata flattened her hand over the ingredient list once again. “Would you even want your true love to see you as well? Isn't that a bit mortifying?”
“I don't mind.” Ino chripped. “Because they'll know when they see me, so we will know each other, and we can find each other and work it out.”
Hinata's shoulders dropped. She still looked very hesitant.
Ino reached her hands across the table to grab Hinata's and brought them together. “Please.~”
Hinata flushed uncomfortably. She never did well with being begged, she always caved. “Al… Alright.” She agreed.
“Ee!” Ino squeaked in excitement.
Hinata slipped our hands away and took the ingredient list, tacking it up above her station and moving the tray she was using before away to a shelf before she grabbed another one and started pulling down her ingredients from the bulk pieces on the shelf.
Ino didn't understand the significance of ingredients, but there were a few that she knew were obvious love-based staples. Lavender springs, rose petals, cinnamon sticks, rosemary, and ginger were some she recognized just out of the jars.
Hinata took careful care to measure each ingredient out and put them in her individual containers, diligently placing them in a line until she had a tray full. She went on to clean up her station, putting away all of the ingredients, before she went to another table with her tray, turning on a burner underneath a glass boiler.
Watching Hinata work was always very interesting. She had practiced for many hours, her hands were careful, and she put care into every single movement. Her hands were also damaged from years of burns, both chemical and from the heat of the boilers, but they were still so gentle, dusting over the gauges to keep them within the correct ranges.
While it was coming up to temperature, she put her focus on combining the elements into a mortar and pestle, carefully crushing through the larger elements until it became a fine powder. Ino had always wondered where the strength in her forearms had come from, and now she assumed that it was probably hours of trying to perfect powders down to the finest she could get them.
There was a delicate sound of the glass mixing rod clinking on the side of the glass as she combined the ingredients, and before long, she was turning the fire off and pulling the brewing container off of its pedestal, pouring the final liquid into another vessel, placing it up on a metal shelf, before beginning to rinse out her cooking vessel.
“It's going to take a little while to cool,” Hinata told her, cleaning off her hands and taking a clean cloth from a drawer to clean down her workstation. “It may take a while.”
Ino nodded. Hinata still probably had work to get back to. “I can leave and come back. Do you want something to eat?”
Hinata tilted her head back to the tray that she was working on and the front counter that she had to man. “I can't leave.”
Ino nodded. “I can go and bring it back.” She pointed over her shoulder. “I know what you order.”
Hinata came back around to the counter, brushing her hands on her apron. “Alright.” She agreed.
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Hinata, now alone in the shop, pulled the ingredients list that Ino gave her back down from her stand to look at it and sigh.
What did Ino need this for? Ino was strikingly gorgeous and confident, her personality brightened in the entire room, and she had never had any problem finding a date because of it.
Unfortunately, that might be the issue. Hinata had listened to a lot of miserable crying over the years of how many of those loves had failed her, and it always broke her heart, or she broke it off with her upset that they weren't particularly what she wanted. She wanted a boyfriend who was nicer, she wanted a girlfriend she could spoil, but not one that demanded it, she wanted a boyfriend who dressed better, a girlfriend who had a career, someone to notice when she changed her hair.
It felt like the goal post was always changing because she was never happy with her options.
Hinata felt like she deserved so much more, but there was only so much she could do to help her and part of her always felt so awful hearing that another one of her relationships had broken off because it always made her feel a sort of relief that she hated.
She didn't know if it was because Ino was just everything that she wasn't, and she was deeply jealous of every relationship she had ever had. Watching Ino date always put a deep pit in her stomach. She liked to think that it was because she felt something off about the men she was dating, but she had thought about it for entirely too long, and she didn't think that was the case.
So though she didn't want to make this potion because she thought that it might disappoint Ino, she was willing to do it so that she could find the right partner, maybe then this sickening feeling in her stomach would go away every time she saw her with someone.
The door opened, revealing that Ino was back with a bright smile on her face and a paper bag full of the promise of food. “I got you a little extra treat.” She told her as she started unloading the meal onto the small table that was by the window, which was equal parts used for their elderly customers to sit down and for the staff to have the occasional break.
Hinata took her apron off and hung it up, taking a moment to wash her hands of any residue of what she was working on before she came to join her.
“I think if this doesn't work, you and I need to do that thing we used to talk about when we were kids.” Ino swiped her hair back over her shoulder while she unwrapped her sandwich. “We'll get a cottage together and some random town and grow all our herbs and flowers together and have our own little shop.”
Hinata cracks a smile. It was always a really cute idea that they had talked about over the years, getting out of the major city to go to one of those villages up in the mountains, where they could escape the extreme bustle of the center of the city, and more so for Hinata, the pressure of her family. It wasn't something that they would ever do. Ino's parents were aging, and as an only child, she was likely going to take over their store. Hinata had a responsibility to this store and all of the work she had put in to become an apothecary in the first place.
Ino took a really big bite and then set her sandwich down, holding her hand over her mouth, showing off her perfectly manicured nails as she sat back. “Between my bad dating and your lack of dating, we're going to end up alone together anyway.”
Hinata giggled. She had a feeling that no matter what, Ino would always have prospects, and she wouldn't need to worry about being alone.
They enjoyed their meal and split the cinnamon cake that Ino got as her treat before there was a soft sound of a dying timer that went off behind the counter.
“That's your potion.” Hinata wiped her mouth and helped clean up the containers before she headed back behind the counter, putting her apron back on, washing her hands once more, and collecting the potion from the cooling shelf.
It had stayed together and kept its color, which was a good sign. There were a lot of potions that people brought in that had the wrong weights of ingredients or incorrect instructions made by people who do not know what they were doing, which would separate. Not only was it unappealing, but it was a sign that the ingredients weren't actually going to work magically together.
She brought it to the counter, and Ino dipped her head down to look at the bottle. “How much of it do I take?”
Hinata returned to the recipe and drew her finger down to the bottom for the serving instructions. She reached underneath the counter for a measuring implement and portioned out the amount that Ino was meant to take. It was more than she was expecting, but not an unreasonable amount for how little of the active ingredient was actually in the final product.
Ino looked at the container with determination on her face, but glanced over at but it was still in the bottle. “There's enough. You could take it too.”
Hinata immediately shook her head. She wasn't sure if it worked yet, but in the event that it did… “I would be absolutely mortified for someone else to know that I knew that…”
Ino waved her hand. “It's okay. I get it, you're so shy.” She picked up the glass and looked at it one last time before she tipped it back like a shot.
Hinata waited for a moment. Hoping that there would be no adverse effect, but before she could even determine that a bright light flashed into her eyes, making her stumbled and grab onto the counter. She forced her eyes closed, but the light didn't go away. It showed her a view of Ino that looked to be right in front of her, but that wasn't possible because her eyes were closed and she was turned away. It was bubbly and hazy, and just like it came, it went away.
She blinked once, twice, and then Ino gasped loudly.
“Did you see me!?” Ino screamed, covering her face with both of her hands. Hinata didn't even get a chance to respond. “I saw you!”
Hinata flushed violently and gripped her hands to the counter because she was starting to feel faint. Was the reason she had always felt so sick that to see Ino in a relationship, because she was in love with her?! Was this why she always had an awful pit in her stomach when she thought she should be happy for her because she had had a good date? She had never considered it. They had always been closer than she had really been to anyone, and maybe that made her feelings unclear between friendship and something else but…
“Oh my god!” Ino screamed. “That's actually so perfect, it makes so much sense. We've known each other for so long. We're perfectly matched. We already have talked about living together, and you're like really hot, but like I've never thought that I could make out with you because we were friends.”
Hinata froze up she was getting a lot of information all at once that she was not aware that Ino had been thinking about before. “You're happy with this?” She voiced.
“Yes, this is like the best news ever!” Ino explained. “Wait, are you okay with us dating?” She reached her hands out across the table towards her, placing her hands on top of the ones that were turning white from clenching.
Hinata's heart soared up into her face, turning it a deep red. She nodded, feeling incredibly lightheaded.
“Then this is absolutely perfect!” Ino squeaked. “Because I have gone through time periods where I thought a lot about kissing you and that really should have been a sign, but we've also known each other a really long time, and you have really great boobs and…”
“Please stop.” Hinata brought both of her hands up, palms out. “I'm going to faint.” She was already struggling with the idea that all of the deep-seated feelings that she had been feeling over the years were actually a crush and not girlhood jealousy, but…
Ino grabbed her hand and pulled her closer to the table, leaning across to kiss her.
Hinata's heart floated into the sky, and it didn't come back down after she had broken away.
Ino smiled at her. “Oh my God, then what we just had was our first date.”
“I… guess.” Hinata voiced.
“I should plan another one,” Ino told her excitedly. “You know what, we should have another one today after you get done here. I'm taking out for dinner.”
Hinata couldn't even think about working for the rest of the day. She was so spaced out for the last five minutes.
“This is the best day ever.” Ino giggled.
Hinata looked at her glowing. She would have to agree with that.