Sasuke stifles a curse as he feels his phone buzz against his leg. It's date night. This can not be happening again.

He pulls the phone out, checks the message, and… yep. Some big mobster's in town for one night only and he's the only one not on assignment.

Fuck his life.

"Karin?" He sticks his head out the bathroom door and into the bedroom, and tries to sound apologetic. It's not that he isn't apologetic; he's just bad at sounding like he is. "Work called. Something came up."

Karin pauses where she's putting on earrings, and Sasuke curses his luck. She really is dressed to the nines, and the reservation had to be called in several weeks in advance.

"Is it that important?" She asks.

"…I really don't want to get fired." Or have lots of people die because I didn't kill a single person.

"Fine." Karin sighs. "I'll see if I can get the reservation moved. Or invite someone over. Juugo's probably free."

She's already making alternate plans. That's… well, it's better for his guilt than if she'd just given him a look and started undressing.

Nonetheless, he goes over and stands behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. He buries his face into her neck as he says, "I'm sorry."

"I know." She tilts her head to the side, pressing her face up against his. "It's just… very annoying."

"If I could let someone else take care of it—"

"Just go, Sasuke." Karin says, giving him a small, indulgent smile. "I can take care of myself for one night."

"…Right." Sasuke changes quickly and grabs his things, leaving.

Karin's eyes follow his car down the drive, and just as she pulls out her phone to call and see if the reservation can be moved, when it buzzes on its own.

Some big mobster's in town for one night only and convinced his wife is cheating on him, so he wants her taken care of.

…Well, she's apparently got the night off already…

o.o.o.o.o

Sasuke sets up on a rooftop across the street from the restaurant that the mob boss is apparently going to be having dinner in. The restaurant in question is very popular, but actually on the twentieth floor of a high-rise hotel in the middle of the city, rather than a stand-alone place. Ironically, it's the exact same one he was planning on having dinner in with Karin.

He kind of wants to stab something, and while stabbing isn't exactly uncommon in his profession, it's considered a bit of a messy way to do a job.

Sasuke doesn't have any back-up. No extraction team if a henchman figures out where he is, no tinny voice in his ear, no man on the inside. The best case scenario, as always, is him making it out alive and unidentified, as usual. On the off chance the government catches him, he'll probably have legal backing, once he contacts them. Other than that, he has no safety net. It's just him, the brisk night air, and a sniper rifle.

The scope on the rifle is, unfortunately, very necessary. Sasuke's eyesight is good, but not quite good enough to make a shot from that far with no visual enhancement. He lines up the shot, focusing in on the mob boss. The man isn't someone he recognizes, other than from the briefing, but it's obvious who he is. The woman next to him fits the profile, too. Sasuke waits for the waitress to finish taking their order so she doesn't accidentally wind up in the shot, and—

Wait.

She definitely just put something in the wife's drink.

And as the waitress turns and makes her way out, Sasuke catches a glimpse of her face. The hair is brown and there aren't any glasses, but even from this distance he recognizes her.

Karin?!

o.o.o.o.o

Karin almost stabs someone when they grab her from behind, hand over her mouth, and drag her into a closet filled with cleaning equipment. Her clothing isn't in much danger from getting mussed, since it's just the white blouse and black trousers that all the waitstaff are wearing.

She smells a familiar cologne before she gets around to plunging a particularly sharp pen into her abductor's leg, and stills.

"Karin, what the fuck are you doing here?"

She wrenches herself forward and turns to see her husband staring at her in undisguised confusion. He's dressed in what appears to be surplus tactical gear, and Karin's kind of confused about how he managed to get into the building without anyone questioning his clothing.

Karin has a dawning feeling of dread. "You aren't."

"Karin." Sasuke's voice doesn't change the inflection of the word to a question or a plea, but the intent is there.

"There's a man in there that thinks his wife is cheating on him. I've been hired to… take care of the problem." She dances around the subject. "You?"

"Mob boss. Not sure who wants him dead, but I'm the one that got the assignment." Sasuke says, and Karin's heart drops.

Not only have they been lying to each other for years, but they've apparently been set to work at cross-purposes.

"…I feel like I should really be angrier about this." Karin finally says. "But honestly, it's kind of hot."

Sasuke gives a look like he can't figure out how her brain works, and then seems to think it over. "I guess the fact that we've apparently been lying about the exact same thing makes it feel a little hypocritical to get angry about it."

"Do you think you can find out who put out the hit on the husband?" Karin asks. Hey, if she's gotten into this mess, might as well make the best of it. "And what was your plan?"

"Maybe, and I had a sniper's nest set up across the street." He pulls out a phone she hasn't seen before (probably a burner, the back of her mind supplies), and starts typing in numbers. "You?"

"The wife has a notoriously low alcohol tolerance. I was going to drug them both, pretending it was just the wine, and then sneak into the hotel room to drown her in the bathtub." Karin shrugged. "I prefer plausible deniability."

"You're using your own face."

Karin shrugged. "All people usually remember about me is the hair color and glasses. With that gone, it's suddenly a lot harder for people to recognize me."

"Except for me."

"Except for you, but that's because we're married, you dummy." Karin rolls her eyes. "You have that info yet?"

"They sent it in an encrypted PDF. It's taking a bit of time to load." Sasuke tells her, shaking the phone a little. "The signal's not exactly good inside a closet."

"…I could comment on your phrasing, but I feel like that would be in bad taste," Karin says magnanimously, and giggles as Sasuke rolls his eyes.

"I was never in the closet."

"You were in an invisible closet that you didn't realize existed."

"It wasn't my fault I thought people were exaggerating about sexual attraction actually existing." Sasuke mutters. "Besides, it's not like you were any better. I saw the way you used to look at Ino."

"I never even pretended otherwise, though." Karin shrugs. "So, the file?"

"I got it." Sasuke's scans through it, and his face slowly falls into an expression that perfectly conveys the sentiment of 'you have got to be shitting me.'

"It's the wife."

Karin processes that.

"We got separately hired by a married couple to kill their spouses on the same night?" Karin shakes her head. "That smells fishy."

"We could call it in?" Sasuke says, though he sounds dubious. They have different companies, and all things considered, either company could easily be the culprit behind whatever this is.

"Or…" Karin says, wheels turning in her head, "We could call my cousin."

"Naruto's not going to be much help," Sasuke points out dubiously, "He's a bit too honest of a politician for that."

"No, not Naruto." Karin shakes her head. "The other one."

Sasuke's eyes widen slowly as he realizes what she means. "Karin, we are not going to Akatsuki with this."

"Why not? I'm related to one head of the organization, you're related to the other, as well as another high-ranking member. We're safe. I mean, it's not the best option ever, but it certainly beats going to the government about this."

Sasuke's face twitches. "You know I don't get along with Obito."

"But Itachi loves you and he can talk Obito around, and Nagato's usually willing to hear me out, at minimum. We got this." Karin smirks, and leans up to whisper in Sasuke's ear. "And after we're done, you can show me how good you actually are with a rope, and we can have some fun."

o.o.o.o.o

A/N: Written for the tumblr prompt:

They keep having to make excuses to cancel dates/hangouts to go after a target and later find out they're after the same one? Maybe don't know the other is an assasin?