Suna Sick Days:

Temari staggered through her front door, shook some sand out of her hair, hung her fan case on the coat rack, and then began sneezing violently.

Curse that informant, she grumbled to herself. Couldn't just give me the info, no, he had to give me his cold, too!

One of the things Temari hated most in the world—besides stepping on one of Kankuro's puppet screws, because wow did those hurt—was being sick. And from the way she felt now she was facing about a week of exactly that.

In hopes of possibly staving off the worst of it, Temari headed for the kitchen to make some tea, but had to stop when another bout of sneezing hit halfway. After that the headache and the wooziness kicked in and she decided that a much better idea would be to collapse on the living-room couch in front of the TV.

Holding a remote in a hand that was totally not shaking, okay maybe a little bit, she stared blearily at the screen as she flipped through channels, finally settling on re-runs of Date a Kunoichi.

There was a sound of movement from the next room, and Temari raised her head hopefully. "Kankuro, is that you?" If she could just get him to go to the store to get some chicken broth, and maybe some lozenges because talking had made her throat start to really hurt, she might be able to get through this with just an average level of misery.

The movement neared the entry to the living-room, but it was Gaara who appeared. "Kankuro went on a mission."

"Ohhh…" Temari groaned. She couldn't ask Gaara to go to the store! The villagers still didn't trust him when he appeared in public. Besides, Gaara barely knew how to use money, since everything had been provided for him when he was younger and Temari and Kankuro did all the shopping now. "When's he gonna be back?"

"Three weeks."

Temari sighed, but broke off in the middle for a fit of coughing. Gaara blinked, then approached Temari's Couch of Woe. Temari tried not to look weirded out as he leaned over the back of the couch to peer at her, but she really kind of was. Then she realized her little brother was watching her watch Date a Kunoichi, and switched from weirded out to full-on embarrassed.

"Are you injured?" Gaara asked slowly.

This apparently concern would have been endearing if it weren't for the creepy intensity of Gaara's stare and the fact that his face was about eight inches from hers.

"No, I'm fine," Temari replied quickly. "It's just—" She sneezed loudly into her sleeve and Gaara jumped back. "Ow. It's just a cold." Glancing over at the TV, Temari saw that the very buff contestants hoping to date the titular kunoichi were racing across a beach in tiny swim shorts. "Yup, I'm fine, so you can go now!" she said urgently, doing everything except actually push Gaara away from her couch in her effort to get him to leave her alone with her terrible reality programs and her awful headache.

Gaara blinked at her again, then slowly backed away.

Great, a whole week of just the two of us, Temari thought unhappily when the headache had receded enough to think and Date a Kunoichi was on a commercial break. It wasn't that she didn't like Gaara even once he had changed, but that she had no idea what to do when alone with him, especially when she was going to be couchbound. Suddenly, a horrifying thought occurred to her. Gaara doesn't know how to cook…we're going to starve!

…

Gaara returned to the library where he had been when Temari called, but did not go back to the book he had been reading. Instead, he walked over to a desk in one corner and picked up the phone, dialing the number that would reach a trading post on Wind Country's eastern border.

The phone on the other end was picked up very quickly, since that particular trading post was one of the least visited. "This is Kankuro, what's up?"

"Temari is dying," Gaara said without prelude. When Kankuro had left him alone yesterday, it had been with the assurance that Temari would be home soon and she would take care of everything. But then she came back like that and he didn't know what to do.

"WHAT? What are you calling me for? Put the phone down, stop the bleeding and get her to a hospital!" Gaara was surprised at how loud Kankuro was shouting: his brother never spoke to him that way in person.

"She isn't bleeding," Gaara replied. "She said she had some kind of…illness. What do I do?"

Gaara had no experience with illness, as Shukaku made short work of any intruders in his body, but he had read about The Plague in history books and thought it was something along those lines. He wondered if they would have to burn the house after Temari died. Kankuro would probably be upset about that, since most of his puppets were in the attic.

"Um…" Kankuro seemed to have realized who he was talking to now, as his voice became much more quiet. (Gaara liked the shouting. It had felt real.) "Did she say what it was?"

Gaara tried to remember what Temari had told him before he started panicking. "…a cold?"

"Oh. Ohhhh." Kankuro muffled the receiver but Gaara could still hear him laughing. "No, she'll be fine! I mean, she'll probably whine like all get out all week, but she won't die. Hey, I have to go make it look like I'm working now. Just, like, give her some orange juice or something and she should feel better soon. Gotta go."

There was a click from Kankuro's end and Gaara left the library with new determination.

…

By this point, Temari had remembered that they owned this wonderful modern device called a telephone and could therefore order in pizza or something, so she was no longer panicked about potentially starving. However, if they ordered something Gaara would have to fetch it when the delivery arrived, which brought up a whole new set of problems.

The elimination round of the Date a Kunoichi episode had just started when Gaara entered the living room again, this time with an odd expression on his face.

"What's up?" Temari asked.

Gaara turned to look at her. "Don't worry," he said in an even, serious tone. "You are not going to die."

"Okay, that's…good to know?" Temari said weakly as Gaara vanished into the kitchen.

She soon forgot this strange conversation, as her favorite contestant was in danger of being eliminated and she therefore had to glare intensely at the TV since her throat hurt too much to yell. Suddenly, she realized that her favorite kind of looked like Shikamaru. Wow, that was weird. Because she totally did not like Shikamaru. At all.

When the episode ended, however, her favorite was still in the running and Temari sank back into the couch cushions with a sigh of relief as the credits started to roll.

The relief quickly changed to confusion when she realized that there were noises coming from the kitchen. Sand noises.

Oh no, what's he doing in there? Temari wondered desperately, looking towards the kitchen even though all she could see from her vantage point was the wall. I just heard the fridge open. Is he going to try and cook? Please don't let him try to cook. Because I'll have to eat it and then I probably will actually die.

"SAND COFFIN!"

Temari actually shrieked at Gaara's shout, then quickly regretted it as her throat burned. What did he just do?

"Temari?"

Temari took a deep, calming breath as Gaara entered the living room again. You can do it, Temari. You can live through this.

"I have prepared a remedy for you."

A thick tendril of sand swept over to Temari's couch. On the sand was a small tray, and on the tray was a glass filled with orange liquid. Temari stared at it doubtfully.

"It's orange juice," Gaara said.

He was staring at her again, so Temari picked up the glass and sniffed at it. Orange juice did sound good right now, and it didn't look sandy…Temari took a sip and sighed with pleasure at the sweet refreshment. My little brother is a walking juicemaker. This is the best thing ever.

"Do you want more? There were a dozen more oranges."

Temari set the glass back on the tray and smiled at Gaara. "I might later. Say, what kind of pizza do you want for dinner?"

[A/N: In the radio show "Oh! Naruto Nippon" (which is awesome by the way), there was a lengthy scene where Gaara's voice actor was pretending to run a juice bar or something, in character, so I decided I had to make a fic about it. I might make a follow-up fic to this later, but I'm letting it stand on its own for now which is why it's marked Complete.]