So this is part of the SSM21 entries, my this is for the hearts on fire series, and this ended up way too long by itself and considerably smuttier than the rest of them and might have more story to it later if I get the urge! so! so just please don't read it if this isn't your thing but also I'd love to hear from you. series function on here when?

Day 6 Prompt: Undercover
title: watch the world explode, from underneath your glow
title lyric by: You've Seen the Butcher, Deftones
Tags: Assassins/Hitmen AU; Smut


Sasuke snorts, glancing up briefly at the barrel pressed to his pretty temple. "Is this your way of courting me? Seems aggressive."

"I'm not going to kill you if you say no."

.

.

.

She doesn't know how she ended up here, pressed against the wall of a hotel utility closet with both hands buried into her partner's hair as his talented tongue and fuckable face work her cunt well beyond its first orgasm; they're entering the second act of this tryst, this mission to lure out their prey.

Trying not let her hips jerk so uncontrollably, as not to concuss him or outright fuck his face — although she'd guess, by the way he pulls back with a smirk, lips swollen and smeared with her mess, that he wouldn't mind.

"Hear s-something?" Voice stuttering in the same manner as her hips, her shaky knees, hating that they've fallen into this charged and haphazard situation. It's barely been 48 hours since they've checked into the place, under the guise of two marrieds indulging in an extramarital rendezvous; they can't get the target to come out of his den, and so they've . . . resorted to this.

In a clinquant hotel of the rich and famous, sporting a long blonde wig as disguise, attempting to lure out their target by "staging" lush and indecent debasement for the benefit of the cameras in the elevator, any stragglers or staff in the hallway, and now, for the rooms unlucky enough to share these walls with them.

"Nothing but you," he says, bereft of breath.

Staring up at her with those glittering sloe eyes, a dash of her juice on his pretty lips, every inch of her skin scalding with dangerous heat at the sight of him on his knees.

Palms her thigh, dips a shoulder under the crook of her knee and elicits a sharp cry of surprise. Slaps it, the admonishing sting crumbling her sarcastic backtalk into a sundered moan.

"I want this whole — damn — hotel to hear you." Hisses this between her legs, mouthing the words into her dripping, puffy lips. Releases hot breath, and it skims her exposed and swollen sex; he watches her writhe. "Especially our target."

Already identified and marked, on shift with only a supervisor as support, they're hoping he'll either be too mortified or stuffed with pride to bring his boss along, catching him alone when they inevitably cause the entire floor to reach a fever pitch of intolerance for such licentiousness — or on the other hand, perhaps render them speechless in embarrassment, hiding under starched hotel sheets.

"Keep going, then." Words bursting between hot and heavy gasps, wanting air. Seeking some semblance of reality, gravity. Redoubling her grip on his hair, scoring his burning scalp with jadeglass fingernails, she instructs him, "Write me a sonnet."

She won't indulge his ego, though it's difficult: He's a slut for pleasing, or perhaps it's just for her. Difficult to read with his dark hair and eyes, the way his default expression to the rest of the world reads purely glacial. At odds with the fact that the second they've been placed together, caught fire, and it's been a harrowing two days of —

"Oh, fu~ck, " she groans, word bouncing; her shoeheel scratches his beautiful, hewn trap muscle, splitting his skin, and she tries to cling to him somehow, rolls her hips into his greedy mouth to stifle his noise from the new cut he's sustained.

When the stiletto jabs him in the ribs, he pulls back again and she tries to hide her trembling lip, swallowing the please! that threatens to reveal that she's definitely not acting, and he's definitely not performing just the bare minimum for their assassination assignment.

Bringing fingers across his mouth, covered in her glossy giveaway fluids, he inspects them for a moment before exhaling, the corner of his lips kicking up in immense satisfaction, lionlike in the way he regards her as the frantic half second before a predator gives chase to prey.

Walking his fingers up the taut terrain of her stomach and then her breastbone — he strays, for a moment, detouring to roll her nipple between his slick fingers — before using the tip of one to press down her bottom lip gently.

Tang and zest brush the tip of her tongue, luring her mouth to water. She knows he knows, and hates him for it.

"Not wet enough for you?" Says it with the force of a steel trap, but her bite is softened by his easy grace, his tender exploration of her tumescent bottom lip.

"A humble offering," he says, voice low and threaded through with a breezy note. Could be teasing. Could be sin. "You should know you taste phenomenal."

Now, her own mouth takes on the ghost of a smirk. "I'm quite familiar."

Curiosity flickers in his intense gaze. Letting it flit away, perhaps to discuss later, he seeks entrance again and she obliges this time despite herself, licking him clean of her savor under his delighted, piercing gaze and readying him for the rest.

As if she'd ever quite come down from the first — if asked, she, lightheaded and trembling like a teenager on a first carnival ride with a first date, her body, heart, soul have been spaced, errant debris being whipped into orbit around the brightest star.

The joy of being suspended between the two almost makes her reconsider getting him reassigned.

He begins again, working her back up to tipping point: Taking one finger up to his knuckle and then trying to catch her breath, find more air, and perhaps they were words she dropped, losing them on accident in her quest, more, fuck, please, taking another with a sound ringing from her throat as a cracked flute, he hasn't even put his mouth on her and maybe he shouldn't, that's too quick; his instinct is to map the skin with his lips, with fire, her stomach and hipbone and thigh as he goes;

say it, and the dark quality of his voice scrapes gooseflesh across her skin, let me hear you

I want—! and she swallows his name down along with saliva and spit; never their real ones, never out loud, let me come, make me come

But then he stops.

Splays his soaked hand across her belly. Eyes hardening, abraded steel.

She senses it too, slipping easily into her impeccably trained, experienced skin.

Knock.

Thumbing away a drip of embarrassing drool from her painted lip, Sakura flashes a grin at her partner getting to his feet.

"Bingo."

Knock, knock, harder now, mutters and the jangling of keys. They're both breathing as if wrecked from a marathon and Sasuke, this new partner she doesn't even really know, leans forward and kisses her in a way that seems chaste considering all they've done.

A dangerous emotion of which she knows the taste: affection.

Temper flashing, she roughly pushes him back at the shoulders.

"What the fuck was that?"

"Are we not lovers? In a hurricane of an affair? Because we hate who we've left?" Then he actually rolls his eyes at her, handsome face carved in irritation. "Are you just out of the academy?"

Reflecting she should have twisted and broken his neck while he was down on his knees, there's no time for a rude retort as the door finally swings open, the politeness and patience of the hotel staff finally extinguished.

Over the shoulder of the supervisor, Sakura spots their guy.

"Excuse me," he says, this unassuming man, eyes skewed away from them and their love nest, "erm, this is a utility closet. We're not for interrupting, but we've had some . . . complaints."

Sakura reaches for Sasuke's tie, smoothing it with her shaky fingers. Blushing as pink as her hair, if her real locks were visible. Adopts an expression just the right blend of overwhelmed, sheepish, and charming as she breezes past him and out of the closet. Both the supervisor and the target scramble back, perhaps afraid to touch or crowd; perhaps afraid to be swept up in her magic.

"We're . . . so sorry, sir." She says this sweetly, throatily, adjusting her dress. Tips her chin down to let her hair fan across her face, touches her wedding ring gently with a hesitant finger, subtly indicating. A hotel of this caliber with its moneyed clientele? This story isn't new to the staff that keep this location clean, fed, drunk, discreet. "It's — an unusual situation, you see. I—"

"Nothing we need to discuss at length, miss." Gruff, but the supervisor's still a little uncomfortable, a little moral, which she supposes is a good thing. A small salve for the soul. "The rooms are much more accommodating to sounds. These thin hallways," and here he raps a knuckle against the wall, "aren't suited."

"We'll just—" Gesturing down the hall, she flashes Sasuke a look over her shoulder. Clearing his throat and shrugging back into his shirt, he half turns to surreptitiously adjust his cock out of sight of the staff.

One step forward and it's not clear if her shoe catches the carpet or if she's wobbly from the drink, or other vices, but she tumbles into the arms of the modest and oddly prim member of the staff — their target, an overseas agent turned loyalist, only to be discovered to be playing the longest con, backchanneling secrets to his original mother country.

He makes a noise as she hooks his neck with her arm to steady herself, something between an ouch! and an irritated growl. She pulls away, still with that sugary smile, surveying him. "Look at me, embarrassing myself further."

The target runs his fingers over his scalp, wincing at a particular spot.

"I may have scratched you with these," Sakura says quietly. Runs her fingertips over the gleaming green nails of the opposite hand. Glossy, they look callous as cut diamonds. "I apologize."

Floating past him too, in her serene way, she drifts down the hallway, Sasuke only inclining his head to them as he sweeps by.

Once they round the corner, both take on a quicker pace, straighter spines. Jaws set.

"He has the birthmark."

"It's him, then."

"0300."

"Early enough?"

"Late enough. Twilight. The only gap I've observed in staff rounds. We'll go then."

Sasuke nods, running his fingers through his damp and mussed hair.

And though by virtue of her apex conditioning, training so violent and unethical as to become intrinsic, the biological reprogramming of bones, subconscious, and soul —

she knows that together they've discovered something, a sentimental frailty, and it's the kind of thing that kills.

.

.

.

She should have known the moment he'd walked into the cafe two days earlier how utterly screwed she was — and as the next couple days would prove, this was literal.

Previously she'd been paired with her favorite idiot, Naruto Uzumaki. While she'd run through partners over the years for various reasons, this one she confidently considered her best friend, and the only person who could insult his intelligence was her. Anyone else she'd bend into a suitcase. (And she had, once, given in to her seething temper and taking their target's uncooperation as a personal affront; Naruto had defended her in that reprimand, since it ended up saving him from revealing his own mistake.)

Always on her heels like a besotted puppy, eager to love and learn from the best, he'd adored her and she hadn't been interested, nor in the partner before that. One fleeting tryst with a redhead woman with an edge, a situation sewing in too many complicated emotions for the life of an assassin, so she'd jettisoned that partner too; she was respected and commanded enough rank to do so. Still saw her on occasion when she needed a body cleaned up.

Killing languid time with a cappuccino and gossip rag, she'd adhered to her usual paces, positioned in line of a quick exit and kept eyes on the entrance. No one caught this legendary undercover agent unawares.

"Not even a photo," she scoffs, pouting slightly at her handler.

"Don't whine," Tsunade clips, jabbing a ruby red fingernail at the table. "It's short notice and he's very pretty. Stop being so fucking difficult with your partners — hell, do me one better and stop fucking them altogether."

"That was one," Sakura mimics her handler's mean-spirited jab. "And she's reassigned, no harm done. My last one is madly in love with his new redhead prince."

"And you."

Another snort of disbelief. "He's sweet, and likes to be nice to things that aren't nice back."

A ting! from the cafe entrance had pulled her attention, snapped her out of a reverie. Eyes riveting to the tall and handsome — no, downright aristocratic, with a nose and beautiful throat sculpted seemingly to gently draw attention to the lovely apple of it. Hair dark, mussed as if sprung from a romp and she has the instinct that no matter what activities he's participating in, he'd always look like he just pulled down a good fuck.

By the ease with which he'd moved between the tables she could sense his training. In civilians' eyes he's unfairly gorgeous; in agents' eyes it reveals talent real and deadly. Bearing his expensive clothing as occupying another skin, fabric spun for a fit and fine specimen as this: She doesn't miss the way he fills out the shoulders of his jacket, the trim waist, lean, mean muscle. Unable to resist shifting in her seat a little, taken aback by what her handler's tossed in her lap —

— or maybe the intensity with which those glittering eyes, black as pitch, are on her.

She's not quite sure if she's jealous of how easy he's sunk into the role, or intimidated by the notion that this might actually be his personality.

Moves deliberately, takes the seat across from her. As if on cue, their wedding rings glint in tandem and the atmosphere shifts.

The play begins.

"Too long without you." Starts with a murmur, his deep, rich tone. Without warning he brings her fingers to his mouth, and the stirring she feels under her rib signals fuck knows what.

"And you, darling," she says, her own voice silken. "We're here now, but we are still in public."

Sasuke lets her hand slide away, observing the ring on his hand with a casual innocence. "Two friends, nothing more."

He raises his hand, signals and orders coffee, black. In the intervening silence, shy on the outside but charged within, Sakura maneuvers closer and leans a knee against his under the table.

"Did you find the place all right?"

"Easy enough to find, particularly with a unique beacon."

"So poetic. You sure know your lines."

"They don't make eyes quite like yours." Stares at her. Lets his knee bounce, gentle, against hers. "They're . . . unique. Surprised they don't have you change them."

Her perfectly-tuned laugh cuts the air in the same pretty song as the shop's bell. Someone recalling the scene would remember it, and likely the way his free hand dips under the table, takes a moment to drag along his well-tailored pant leg, and then take her knee in a firm way. More than a suggestion, a little less than an outright proposal of public sex.

"Many a time," and here she fingers her wedding ring, absentminded, "they help me get exactly what I need."

Later — days, in fact, the police interviews finally fanning out from the hotel and reaching nearby businesses, scant witnesses, a net cast wide — the scene is described as thus:

Two people definitely rendezvousing with one another and decidedly without their other married halves, the energy of their encounter the kindling of a fire, the beginning of an affair. Uncomfortable but insatiable. You wanted to give them space, but you couldn't stop watching it all happen.

Wanting to be them.

.

.

.

All the staff could feel the illicitness rolling off them in waves. Two such pretty people with a heady, beguiling self-possession; put them together, let it spark. They'd kept a strange sliver of distance, planets of equal gravitational force exerting power on one another, a delicious tension you wanted to watch fall apart.

That tension, Sakura reflected later, was completely real. Sharing only one bed for the cause, he had taken the floor to sleep in a gallant gesture, marred only by the fact that she couldn't sleep because her heart was racing for the gold and her skin, burning with anticipation and there was no requirement for this on these assignments, not technically, but she can hear his too-even breathing and knows he's lying there, listening.

Betrayed by her own body as her hand slips beneath pajama shorts of gorgeous silk and she imagines his hands instead, quiet sounds becoming moans and eventually she tosses away the goodgirl image, imagining what he could do to her and every orifice how hard how well how filthy while the nonsensical noises take on clearer, vivid wants and needs and is she speaking to an empty room or terrifying him with her brazenness or unprofessionalism but what does it matter as she circles the depraved drain, trembling, toes curling —

And he's standing now, summoned from his polite disengagement as intended because deep down she wants him to watch, she doesn't know who he's kidding, pretending to sleep on the scratchy hotel carpet. Shirtless and a bit surprised, but his black eyes refocus as a shark's snatching sight of prey, and Sakura glimpses the man she wants to pull out of their act.

In a voice not much above a whisper, catching a little as brand new stubble on hot skin, he asks,

What can I give you?

The noise from her is incomprehensible, if taken as speech. As direction, his gaze travels from her hair, her real hair, pink and pouring and splayed over pillows and her hand, delicate but dedicated fingers working herself, slick with fluid, and finally settling on her jadeglass, hypnotic eyes.

That, in the end, is what tips her over, rips an unexpected whimper from her hot throat and renders her searing, limp, languishing in the aftermath.

Amid her noise, a sated, susurrating growl.

Her partner grants a polite interval of time before approaching, careful, the manner in which dangerous lions approach feral and skittish counterparts in mating season.

"Are you asking for this as this married woman? This adulterer?" he says, low, advancing with pent-up energy and hard cock, straining at his sleepshorts, "or as your partner?"

She swallows hard, once. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."

On her quickly, dragging her down the bedsheets by her ankle, he'd left her shivering underneath him as he'd said,

"We're not doing much of that."

.

.

.

Now, curled up in a chair on the balcony, she hopes Sasuke doesn't notice the slight vibration in her fingers as she holds out the cigarette. Bends down, ever the gentleman, to light it for her.

Watching her.

Taking a strand of the wig's hair between his fingers, he presses his mouth to her blonde locks. "I can signal them if you want; let them know it's a go."

"Sure."

The first drag is always the best, but never as good as your earliest memory, the primordial hit. Ebbing, always, to baseline. The irony in the chemicals hitting fast to let her quivering subside.

Unsure if it's violent adrenaline or something about the way he kissed her.

Unsure if it's because the target's been located, the thrill of the impending kill.

Or even the tightness still threading her muscles, an incessant aching between her thighs; jumpy and frayed with the almost, the not-quite release. A stupid thing, as a professional, to be hung up on, as feeling unfulfilled is part of the reason she's a lucrative agent, the ability to compartmentalize, discard. None of this is about being human.

"Do you want the shower first?"

Without tearing her gaze from the horizon, she shakes her head, says "No, go on," to confirm, and takes a drag even as he lingers for another few seconds. Finally, he goes.

Get your shit together, she scolds inwardly, flicking ash into a nearby tray. A heavy, exquisite thing, as if ashes were diamonds. Although in some way, couldn't they be pressed into them? Isn't that what she, and most good agents, did under pressure?

Taps her green nails on the glass table, a distracting rhythm from the buzzing in her skin, the absolute heatsink that is her—

Groaning, she stubs out the cigarette and sweeps into the suite, shutting the balcony door behind her.

Throws the curtains closed, checking for peeps and gaps. She tears off her wig and tosses it on the bed, shaking out long, cramped pink locks, and taps the television to life in passing, looking over her shoulder to ensure there's something sufficiently mundane and noisy on as she steps easily out of her dress, leaving it on the floor as shed, sublime skin.

Opens the shower room door and steps into the humid air before she can turn back.

She stands for a moment, bare, letting the thick steam ripple in petite waves, beading water on her skin. As she lifts her chin and swings open the door, he's already saying,

"I did offer it to you first."

"We can share." Her tone's approaching casual but not quite, and she folds her arms across her chest, lips pursed with a defensiveness she knows she doesn't have the right to walk in with. "It would be best if we made an appearance downstairs so we're seen. Maybe an aperitif. Rest up. There's only so many hours before the finale."

"We have time for any and all of it," he says, thumbing away some wet pink locks from her forehead. It's gentle, and she lets him. "And don't be timid. You've killed grown men and rich princes, Sakura. If you need something from me, say it. We're partners." Voice quieter still, blending in and warbling with the sound of water hitting the walls, the glass. "We're adulterers, remember?"

She turns fast, wet hair whipping him in the face as she shows him her back.

"I just wanted a shower, Sasuke. That's it."

"Sure."

But it's the same sort of 'sure' she handed him earlier, half-committed. She lathers up her hair with his dark eyes searing fissures in her shoulder blades, seeking an opening to crawl inside.

Vibrating with anticipation again, torn between climbing him and demanding that he kneel and finish his earlier job. The worst part is, he would.

Sasuke takes the plunge, pressing his mouth on her neck in a soft way belying their profession, their mutual ruthlessness, and the intimacy of the act bleeds the cartilage out from her knees and leaves her hard shell in pieces on the shower floor. It's a silent and gentle inquest, a stopgap to affirm once more if he can take her.

Sakura whines.

And now her forehead's against the glass with his arm around her waist, mapping her soapskin with his mouth despite the lather running trails down her back, in his face, to the drain. Shushing her, like she's some skittering loose animal free of her cage.

"I'll finish your hair," he says, wringing out a handful of it; between kisses the spent water's pattering the floor, and among all that, the sounds of her quiet moaning. "And then I'll finish you."

She mumbles something indistinct.

"Hmm?"

want you to fuck me

Just that word from her lips warbling in the shower noise perks his cock, makes him hard, and he presses his hips against the curve of her ass, slick and thick.

Can a man just like consonants, or is it the thrill of being vulnerable with the organization's most effective assassin? Difficult to believe this woman — crumbling under his hands as he finds her breast and circles, but does not touch, her nipple, as he traces the curve of the beautiful pinna of her ear with this tongue and she arches her hips back against his in response, breaths mingling with curses, as he expects, nothing less from this small, lithe murderer of men — carries the codename that she does.

A scraping sound. Her fingernails drag on the glass, clearing the steam where they scratch and break the seal, relenting condensation liquid drips not unlike the mess of earlier, the love he left, still wet between her thighs and dripping, keeping her primed.

Please — for her part she's buzzing and so close to begging but she doesn't want to go so far, not yet, not one for asking, much less insistently, it's too reminiscent of the way men beg for their lives. Take me like this — and she's cut off by his tongue in her ear and the sweep of chillbumps pinging bright and clear against the humidity of their shower, his fingers taking a circuitous route around her clit and she thinks of killing him except then he couldn't do this for her, tease her, delicious.

"Are you ready, though?"

In response she rolls back her hips with something like a growl, blatant frustration, luxuriating in the way his thick cock slips between her soaked thighs, skims the length of her swollen cunt, slippery, throbbing.

"Feral." Sakura's fairly sure that he's teasing her, even in that neutral tone. "I'm not opposed to that."

"Shut up." Her words this time are clear, cleaving through the water's echo.

And now he's laughing, softly, laughing, she hates it but craves it as a physical thing she can rub into her skin, throw back like a shot of clean liquor, burn her throat with it and warm the belly.

She feels the muscular outlines and lowlands of his chest as he presses against her gently, flattening her to the freezing glass with his hands in a snug and firm glissade parade down the inlet of her waist, briefly grasping her ass in each and rewarding them both with another one of her breathy moans.

Wriggling beneath him and his mouth as he nips her on the base of her neck, one palm flat against the glass and leaving another imprint, breaking the endless steam; her other hand tangled in his hair, nails scoring his scalp and pulling him closer, the heat of their skin scorching them both.

Sasuke!

and that's a bratty tone in which to say his name if he's ever heard it, a strangled whine threading each syllable and that's enough, he's fit to burst and his hands slide forward to grip her hips, hard, she needs no instructing as she rolls them them back, tilting toward him and slick and ready with words coming through her quick gasps and tumbling from her mouth

fuck me! or fill me!

and it doesn't matter which, really, and he's teasing her again with the head and length of his cock against her cunt, resisting against her thighs and making her tremble, shudder, he thinks he senses that homicidal urge that glimmers through her body so it's time, won't lose his life over this although that danger, he reflects, might be what living is,

so he lifts her hips, eases his underneath her and snaps her to him with a bruising grip; she takes his cock to the hilt, saying his name and million other half-formed pleas against the glass, nails scrabbling, tapping some haunting song and he pauses at the way her muscles grip him and he spasms

Don't, not yet, he berates himself, gritting his teeth, swallowing a groan, you fucking amateur, don't come,

she's laughing softly, the cords of her throat vibrating with pleasure and he knows he's getting back what he's been giving, that's what he gets for teasing,

he pulls out, positions his tip at her cunt again, leaning forward and reaching around for her clit and she's looking at him over her shoulder, that divine jade eye gleaming and sharp and skewering him through,

he barely hears what she says, focused on her lips and flush high in the bit of her cheek he can see and the way she tilts her hips toward him, slapping his at thigh with a cold hand fresh off the glass but he gets the gist, another oh fuck me sounding gentle in comparison to the rest of her instructions which he's reasonably sure sounds like something about rearranging her insides,

and so he does,

entering her again in one swift motion and in this moment she seems so small, oddly delicate in his hands as he palms her hips easily and fucks her with abandon, eyes on those phosphorescent fingernails against the glass, lulled into ruin by the sounds in her throat and wondering at the full spectrum of moans and sighs and filthy things he can tear from her mouth, though she doesn't need much help with that and she braces herself now, scrabbling at the bar nearby and using it as leverage as he pulls back on the rhythm, sinks in slow to draw out a clear cracked whimper and it might be her first unrestrained one, a beautiful note —

perching on her toes to get more of him, take more of him, spine in a beautiful and vulnerable bend, each knob carved and sacred beneath the skin; he reaches forward, strokes shallower now from this angle but worth the tremble in her moan when his fingers find what they're looking for,

it's almost unbearable, she's thinking, so close and she's unsure if that slipped from her mouth too but he's kissing her wherever he can reach, mouthing nothings and somethings into her skin but all these inputs and sensations are fucking overwhelming and

good girl and that's what he's saying against her skin and back and she's done for, she can't unhear it, this indulgent praise susurrating and dark, good girl

insides twisting muscles twitching, releasing on his fingers and cock with a muffled sort of sound, trained for quiet clandestine closet fucks and unused to such desperate but fulfilling tipping points.

Shattering, thighs shaking, voice breaking as glittering glass, mind smearing away present reality as her vision flickers; she's vaguely aware of him finishing close behind, hoisting up her hips and riding his own pleasure out in a manner much less violent and frantic than she expects.

Almost considerate.

The longest moment in which the only sound is their breathing: His wounded and heavy, hers coming in short bursts and the water, still raining on them and their skin and the glass and the marble.

She turns to face him, on fire, moving in a deliberate and tentative circle. Feverdreamed, channeling the wavelength of the outermost planets, eyes blazing.

When she snakes her arms around his neck and kisses him, pressing her tongue deeply into his mouth, it's a blip in his understanding of the universe, and Sasuke takes it into stride, needing only half a second to oblige.

.

.

.

At 0300 she puts a silent bullet in the target's head, and like a true gentleman, her partner provides the second for good measure.

Their plant in the security office has handled the creative camerawork, so now it's simply a matter of summoning their cleaners to the unoccupied hotel room — which according to the blueprints recently updated from the previous decades' modernization, now didn't exist.

Waiting for the mop-up crew, they linger in whatever has fundamentally shifted between them without speaking. Sakura would like to think it's an overcautious instinct, but the way Karin steps into the tension in the room and actually sneers rebukes her of the notion.

"Nice wig. Another new partner, huh?"

Karin nods to her right-hand man, who makes short work of laying down plastic, all clean snaps in the awkward silence and tight corners with tape.

"My last is on family leave," Sakura defends, staring at the covered carpet. "He'll be out for a while."

Karin's eyes flicker to Sasuke, assess his attractiveness and test the strength of her tensile bisexual edges in one glance, and roll up to the ceiling.

"Well." At first that's all she says. Then she reconsiders. "Good for him, then."

No one speaks: The rest of it proceeds in jerks of the chin and professional nods as they break a body down to its baser parts, bones and sinew, the fading shape of a man pinned as a butterfly in a box, the whole of an international spy reduced to this.

As they take their leave without ceremony, the body's remnants neatly packed in a laundry cart for final disposal, Sasuke and Sakura lag behind to check the doors and corners and windows, scour the rug for evidence.

Sakura's the last one out of the room that doesn't exist — the most fitting place for her to crowd Sasuke up against the door jamb and kiss him gently on the side of his jaw.

Such a stark contrast to a few hours later, in which she points her well-loved gun at his temple in their hotel room and he knows that she knows it's outfitted for swift and precise silence.

"I'm going to need a new partner. Uzumaki's gone the husband and children route, bless him."

Sasuke snorts, glancing up briefly at the barrel pressed to his pretty temple. "Is this your way of courting me? Seems aggressive."

"I'm not going to kill you if you say no."

His only response is to raise his eyebrows again. You sure?

"We'll have to present a united front, is all." Her voice is jaunty, casual for someone a trained slip of the finger away from needing a second clean-up crew visit. "My handler gets sick of reassigning people to me. And I'm . . . considering taking an easier gig for a bit. A more long-term deal, instead of the fly-by-night kills."

With one finger, Sasuke pushes away the metal barrel from his forehead. Surveys her without expression.

Smirks.

"Was wondering if you're interested," she finishes, holstering her weapon, eyes skittering away from him. Seeming, actually, concerned with the answer.

Glancing pointedly to check that her gun is stowed, he closes the gap with two steps and a kiss on the neck that reminds her how weak knees can be.

.

.

.

Two months later, Sasuke's gazing into the trunk of a reasonably mid-sized suburban vehicle, lost in thought.

"He-ey, neighbor!"

Jolted from a daze, he glances into the car and shuts it as an unassuming brunette heads toward him with a wave, smile friendly. Sasuke attempts to return it.

"You're next door, hm?" Trying on this average skin feels difficult at first, but it's coming along, finally. "Sorry — we've just moved in, and my wife's already busy with her new work."

They shake, Sasuke half-catching his name; he'll probably have to ask again, but it's a reason to engage him later and begin the process of ingratiating himself, learning routines. He wishes she was here managing the banal introductions, but she's currently sequestered in their laundry anteroom, sifting through their recent flurry of work communications. Not so bad, though, to be blessed with it so soon after moving.

He commits the errant details of his new neighbor to memory: Ditzy, a little windswept in clothing and hairstyle, two children. Office job, family man. Easy prey. Catalogues it knowing he'll need to wring out every detail for later — hopefully over a good glass of wine.

Detaching himself with the promise of a double-dinner-date (my wife would love your wife! his neighbor says), Sasuke enters the house and eventually finds said wife sitting on the floor underneath the laundry room's window, brow furrowing occasionally as she dictates unknowable information from whatever the headphones are reciting.

When he comes in and stands in the doorway she smiles, holding up a single finger to indicate just a little longer.

Waiting is fine. Silent gait: He takes up the spot next to her on the floor and surveys her notes.

One section is titled Whiskers and has a couple bullet points. Fragments of things, six months leave, new son! send him a gift. tell Womanizer fuck him he's not good enough for you, all one long sentence with a little scratchy smile at the end. Second section, short and sweet, hope your lovenest is suiting you, stay tuned for my next gift.

And the third —

"New assignment?" he asks, resting his chin on her shoulder. She flickers her eyes at the earbud and he plucks it out of her ear, repeating his question.

Sakura nods, eyes casting about as she listens, processing. The pencil tip hovers over the page, circling in an impatient motion as she rewinds the recording and begins it again.

Now she's just writing letters here and there, nonsensical pieces in the way of a harried grocery list.

"We have a year to work them," she mutters, more to herself than to him. Still, he listens; the notes will go up in smoke courtesy of her cigarette, the burner phone into their dangerous bucket of acid replaced during the quarterly visit by the woman with glasses who details their car, replaces their carpet in the middle of the night, cleans other things.

It's good to know what's coming.

"I'm lead." She smiles at this, burying her nose in his tousled hair.

Knowing her steel trap memory, the corner of his mouth kicks up in a smirk as she pulls graphite across the page, knowing her handler must have invoked her title somewhere in that faux laissez-faire recording, layered in for anyone listening amid the gabbing of gambling and shenanigans.

The codename name she earned less than a year after academy graduation, the one he knew her by before ever knowing her real one —

Widowmaker.