Author Note: I had requests (ok, not requests, I asked, but still!) for me to do a one-shot collection of Suika. This was the first idea I had in the arsenal, and I hope you like it! This is Karin's point of view.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto; I make no profit from this.


"Karin, you look like hell." Suigetsu noted, and for once he wasn't grinning. He actually looked worried.

Me? I was lagging behind the rest of our little team by a few feet, feeling tired, shaky and shivery. I didn't have the power to hit Suigetsu, nor the will to want to.

"Karin?" Suigetsu sighed, picked me up and kept walking. "Sasuke, Karin's sick."

In any other circumstance, I would've kicked and screamed and pitched a fit. Suigetsu was not my friend, in most circumstances. But in this one, Suigetsu was warm; I was freezing and he was carrying me, which was nice since I felt exhausted to an extreme.

"We'll set up camp soon." Sasuke sighed. "Keep an eye on her, we can't have our medic dying."

In a moment of lucidity I almost called Sasuke an asshole, but that would've been too much work, and my mind had gone fuzzy again within seconds.

"Karin, are you ok?" Suigetsu held me closer, as if worried that I might freeze to death.

"Mm... You're nice Sui-chan." When I'm sick, it usually goes back and forth between lucidity and complete truthfulness. It was true though, when Suigetsu wasn't back-talking me and I wasn't beating the shit out of him, we could play nice.

"I think you have a serious fever." Suigetsu mumbled. He had a guarded look on his face like he didn't want to get his hopes up.

I faded off a bit, to the point where I could hear everyone around me, but I was too tired to open my eyes. I could still feel Suigetsu holding me, shifting me a bit here and there.

When I "woke up", it was dark. I couldn't seem to figure out where I was until I stretched a bit and found myself met with tent walls. In the dark, lilac eyes glinted at me.

"Shit, Suigetsu you scared me." I felt achy all over, bleary and still cold. I debated for a moment before cuddling up to Suigetsu.

"Your fever broke a little while ago." I couldn't see him, but he sounded amused by all of this.

"Have you been up all this time keeping an eye on me?" Of course he won't admit it, I told myself mentally. Why are you even asking?

"Well, Sasuke said I shouldn't let you die." His teeth glinted in the darkness. "So yeah, I kept an eye on you."

I aimed a kick in his general direction, but it had next to no power in it. "You're such an ass." I rolled away from him, and he made a low whine in his throat.

"Aww is the little puppy sad that his toy got away?" I teased, but soon realized that I was still really cold away from him. My teeth chattered and I resisted the urge to go back to his warm arms.

Suigetsu started to laugh, and I realized he had some foresight in what would happen.

"Shut up!" Sasuke yelled from his tent.

Suigetsu wrangled his laughter into a chuckle and grabbed me. "Karin, will you relax?"

"I hate you so much." I muttered but allowed myself to be pressed against him. He was so warm, and it was so nice...

I fought back some... interesting thoughts that I thought had to be the result of brain damage from my fever and closed my eyes.

"What are you thinking?" Suigetsu, surprisingly, wasn't using our closeness to his advantage. He just held me, both of us as still as statues. He looked at me in the darkness and his lavender eyes shined at me. Strangely, it didn't creep me out.

"Nothing important. Why?" The few times we could actually be civil, we could talk, almost like friends. It was usually so rare that it felt strange every time, like something awkward and unreal.

"You got really tense all of a sudden." Suigetsu was rubbing my back gently, his hand never going lower than mid-back.

"Can we just get some sleep?" I shivered at the odd realization that he was trying to comfort me. He didn't even know what was wrong and here he was, trying to be nice.

"Whatever." Suigetsu squeezed me gently, pulled the unzipped sleeping bags around us more, and sighed.

It soon became apparent that neither of us was going to sleep though. I was having doubts about my Sasuke-kun, and he could tell I was tense. Neither of us was going to sleep anytime soon.

"Alright, Karin, spill the beans." He had me in a tight grip now, and I could only assume that he was using his power to increase the muscle mass in his arms. It wasn't like I could run though, I was sure if I tried to make a run for it, I would freeze anyway.

"Whatever do you mean?" I looked away from him, hoping that he couldn't see my avoidance in the dark.

"Something is going on with you." Suigetsu didn't loosen his grip at all, let alone let go of me. "A) You're not hitting me, and B) you're like holding a block of cement."

Ah, hell with it. "Did Sasuke-kun care that I was sick?" I yawned. I really was tired, but nowhere near sleep. "Be honest."

"He didn't want you to die..." Even without seeing him, I could tell my silver-haired teammate was skirting the issue.

"Did he care, Suigetsu?" I pressed, keeping my tone low. "Not was he worried about if his medic-nin was going to make it, did he care about me?"

"No." Suigetsu sighed and removed one arm from me to get a drink from his water bottle. "He didn't."

I closed my eyes and lay against him. I wriggled one arm out of his hold and touched his face just to figure out where he was.

"Thank you Suigetsu..." I whispered, and then kissed his cheek. "For telling me the truth."

"Yeah..." Suigetsu rewrapped both arms around me. "Anytime."

I fell asleep, happy in Suigetsu's arms that night, with a new outlook on life...

And a new crush, one who always told me the truth, even if he did have a bit too much of an attitude to him...


Author Note: I actually thought of this last night because I didn't feel well, but I refused to get up and type it up at 5 AM. Drop me a comment if you want, I love to hear from my readers. I'm going to start typing up the next one now...