Karin knew that he would never be anything like Sasuke. Entertaining thatthought had long since crossed her mind.
Suigetsu wasn't really devastatingly handsome, not exactly the dark and mysterious type either, and definitely not the type you became infatuated with after first glance (like Sasuke).
Karin couldn't possibly deny any of that.
In fact, their relationship when they first met had been anything but pleasant.
It had remained in that state of tension for years on end.
But Karin couldn't deny the little stirrings of feelings she had begun to develop towards Suigetsu, or the hints of attraction that she desperately tried to cast away in some far off, remote area of her mind.
She couldn't deny that the unnaturally sharp teeth she had once found both annoyingly white and unsettling were now making her stomach do flips whenever he grinned sheepishly.
She couldn't deny that his light-blue tinged, snow white hair was pretty devastatingly handsome when it hung about his face in straight, flowing locks as he hovered over her, panting.
It wasn't Suigetsu who had disregarded her as a mere hindrance and sacrificed her without batting an eye lash.
It wasn't Sasuke who came to join her in Konoha after she had been interrogated.
She remembers that day like no other; after months of settling in to a sort of pattern while living in the leaf village (juggling being a former high class enemy while volunteering at the hospital in the emergency room) was when it happened.
She was leaving a supermarket, accompanied by her permanent escort by the name of Sakura, along with a particularly lazy looking friend of hers who never took his hands out of his pockets and always looked half-asleep.
She had actually made friends with the one called Sakura. The other, eh.
He could use some work in her opinion.
But as she was heading back to her stay, she spotted a flash of extremely bright orange standing out over the average height in the crowd.
Then Sakura said cheerfully beside her, "Looks like Kakashi Sensei's returned from that scouting mission with your friends." Karin shot her a confused glare.
Suigetsu and Jugo remained as guarded prisoners for seven months, until being released under the same conditions that she herself was getting accustomed to.
Karin didn't even know how to go about the situation; were the three of them ever even really friends?
It had always seemed that they stuck together solely for the reasons Sasuke layed out for them.
Sure, they might have grown on her over time, a certain shark-toothed, violet-eyed in particular, but…would they even care to see her? Would they want too?
Karin realized soon, in spite of her inner turmoil, that living in the same village inevitably would lead to them running into each other at some point. So even though she had put off deciding whether or not to visit either one of them for weeks, she couldn't be too shocked when she saw Suigetsu casually leaning over the wooden railing on a bridge as if he had lived in Konoha all his life.
She was already halfway across, and couldn't run away in the opposite direction now.
Karin kept walking steadily and almost passed out when a soft breeze carried the scent of crisp detergent and clean water over to her from where he was standing.
She was almost passed him now.
She could pass him and then maybe come talk to him some other day. In a week or two, when her senses weren't assaulting her.
"Where's your escort?"
Shit. Suigetsu had turned around. He was talking to her. Karin jerked her head to look over her shoulder rigidly, not in annoyance, but unease.
"They decided I don't need one anymore." Damn, she didn't mean to bite out her words. Suigetsu obviously noted her harshness.
"I see you're as uptight as ever." He turned around fully and was now leaning back with his elbows propped up behind him on the railing for support. Karin spluttered for a response and felt her face growing heated.
Suigetsu laughed, that infuriating, childish, beautiful, fucking hot sound, and immediately her head was spinning and she was both as angry and as aroused as she had been in a good seven months.
Refusing to look like an idiot in front of the biggest idiot she knew, she formed a sentence in her head and then decided to speak it with her mouth.
"Where's your escort?" Karin let out a little breath in relief as she heard her voice sound genuinely questioning and not bitchy.
Suigetsu laughed again, kicking himself off from his slouch against the railing and walking towards her.
"It's his day off." He began, before adding, "Miss me?" And then he smiled a pretty, sharp little smile, just two feet in front of her, and before she knew it she was talking again.
"You want to go somewhere? I mean, to talk…or to…" Karin trailed off, noticing his frown and raised eyebrow.
"Whatever." She said bitterly, about to turn on her heel. She felt something latch onto her forearm, looked back, and saw that it was Suigetsu's hand.
"You haven't changed." He was smiling at her again.
Karin felt a familiar pang of annoyance, and was about to display some of her old tendencies, before she heard Suigetsu offer, almost timidly, "Your place?"
As they entered her apartment, Suigetsu mentioned grudgingly that there were probably several ANBU keeping watch on him, regardless of the fact that they had dropped his requirement for an escort as well.
Karin snorted at him, just because the irritated tone in his voice was so familiar, and something she hadn't heard in such a long time.
Suigetsu "hmphed" and told her to keep her trap shut, and she yelled back some kind of insult she had probably used a million times already before.
Eventually, they were bickering instead of "catching up" and then they were fighting, and then Suigetsu was laughing so hard, and Karin couldn't even begin to figure out what at.
And when he said that he had forgotten how much fun arguing with her had been between peels of laughter, she felt her heart clench uncomfortably, and then her own composure break in two.
Karin sank to her knees, five thousand different emotions taking her over , as she felt tears welling and spilling over before she could yell at him to get out.
She frantically wiped her eyes with her sleeve before looking up, her vision fuzzy, to meet his mortified expression.
"Whats…" "Karin?" All traces of condescending were gone from his voice, to her utmost surprise. He met her where she sat on the floor, kneeling down to reach her.
"Hey, stop. Stop it." Suigetsu's brow furrowed and he sounded genuinely distressed.
Karin calmed herself and then looked him in the eye, hopefully conveying that she had no explanation, that she didn't know herself what the hell had just happened, and that he shouldn't ask.
Suigetsu apparently got the message, and didn't pry, or ask, and simply hoisted her up into his arms suddenly as she screeched in irritation.
Carrying her over one shoulder like one might a sack of flour, Suigetsu hauled her over to her sofa and unceremoniously plopped her down on to the cushions, seating himself next to her afterwards.
"I forgot. You're a girl." Suigetsu grinned cheekily at her and dodged a hit she had aimed for that pretty face of his.
"What the hell do you mean?" Karin settled into the couch with her arms crossed and a pout on her lips. Suigetsu's face fell slightly and he frowned.
"I mean…that I know it's been tough for you, for a while. And it's weird here. Everyone's happy and hopeful and everyone wants to help you."
Karin looked at him and waited for him to continue, not sure where he was headed with his statement. Suigetsu chuckled before continuing.
"And then I show up and screw over the whole settling down thing you had going on, right?" Karin could tell he wasn't seriously upset, but there was a strange look in his eyes nonetheless.
"Still, you don't have to cry like a little bit-
Karin smacked him on the back of his head before he could finish.
"You don't even know what you're saying." She grumbled and blew hair out of her eyes with agitation.
"Oh?" Suigetsu raised an eyebrow and leaned back into the couch, smirking, his eyes fixed on her in an indescribable fashion.
"Get over yourself." She huffed from her side of the sofa.
Suigetsu rose suddenly from the sofa.
"Fine. I'll let Jugo know he can drop by then, if you want." Suigetsu made for the door until he heard Karin's frustrated groan.
"No! I- … Don't go." She said quietly, glancing over at him before quickly adverting her eyes and grumbling, cheeks burning.
Suigetsu let the hand he had on the doorknob drop to his side. He then made his way back over to the sofa, sitting closer to Karin than he had been before.
She was looking everywhere in the room but at him.
Suigetsu sighed.
"Listen. I don't know myself what the two of us had going when we were back with Sasuke."
Karin blushed more furiously as the memories of the nights they had snuck off together flooded her mind. Suigetsu continued talking next to her, seemingly unaware.
"But, things are different here, you know?"
Damnit. He was politely ending any kind of relationship they had previously had. He probably had gotten a good look at Sakura, and taken a liking to her hair.
Or maybe it was that quiet one with the strange eyes and huge chest.
Yeah. Either of those were better compared to boring, bitchy, ugly Kari-
"-and maybe it would actually work."
Karin's thoughts were interrupted when she heard Suigetsu halfway through his sentence. She looked up at him and noticed he was looking back at her, as if waiting for an answer.
"What was that?"
Suigetsu stuck out his lower lip and grunted a little in annoyance.
"I said," he began, "that maybe here, where we can have an actual life, you and me…it might actually work." As realization hit her, Karin looked at him in awe.
It wasn't romantic in the least, and might have actually been insulting to some girls.
But coming from Suigetsu, it was practically "I love you".
"Are you officially asking me out?" She offered, smirking.
"Only if we're about to put this couch to good use," Suigetsu answered just as slyly with a grin that made her heart thump twice as hard in her chest.
She growled and went to smack him, but he caught her wrist easily and yanked her over and onto his lap in one fluent motion.
She scowled at him, because if she didn't, she'd risk confessing being in love with him.
Suigetsu just kept smiling at her beautifully.
Karin felt her scowl dissipate and her pulse take off when she saw that he was staring at her lips intently.
She then felt that she was smiling in spite of herself.
"Go ahead." She said after a moment, the reluctant smile still in place on her lips.
Suigetsu didn't need to be told twice. His eyes flashed to hers in a flicker of contact. And then before she knew it, he was kissing her, his hand reaching around to hold the back of her head and his fingers lacing through her hair.
They had kissed before, back when they were traveling with Sasuke. It was always just fooling around though, and nothing close to feeling like this.
Even though they had slept with each other, the simple act of kissing at the moment felt like so much more.
Karin settled further into Suigetsu's lap, bringing her legs to rest on either side of his, straddling him, and winding her arms around his neck.
He only responded by kissing her harder and letting his hands drop to grip her thighs firmly.
"Ah!-" Karin let out a moan as she felt his lips drop to her neck and begin tracing scorching hot, languid kisses on every inch of skin he could find.
"You…you're right…" Karin struggled, her voice breathy and staggered.
"What are you talking about, woman?" Suigetsu mumbled against the side of her throat, his breath falling dangerously close to her ear.
Karin regained a little composure at his blunt words, and promptly shoved him flat against the couch on his back, her hands pinning his wrists above his head.
She had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes widen a fraction of a second as she lowered herself onto his body and brought her face closer to his.
When she pressed her hips down and into his hardening length, his head lolled back and his eyes fluttered shut in the most fascinating way.
Karin repeated the action more firmly, and he gritted his teeth, muttering a quiet curse at the feeling.
She listened to his deep groan as she continued rolling her hips against his.
Karin then brought her lips right beside his ear and whispered quietly, "I did miss you."