Author's Note: I seem to have an unlikely fondness for writing the beginnings of AUs. No, I don't understand it either, but this was written a while back, and I thought it best that I archive it. It was originally written for the LJ community 31days' prompt of why do you sleep with girls? The following chapters may not be written under that prompt, or for nothing at all.

I own neither Shaman King nor the basic idea of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. This is not entirely like the movie – I've always thought that the people who edited movies for fandom and did not do anything else to them were lazy – only how the characters of Shaman King might fit into that universe. In my mind, anyway.

What do you think?

Mr. and Mrs. Asakura



She was awake when he arrived home at last. The lights in each room were lit, toned bright and harsh to reflect the procession of his car over the driveway into their room, his movements across the gravel, through the door and into the house where she stood waiting. It had been evening so long that morning had begun to stir in the folds of the shadows, but she was still dressed in her professional skirts (black, silk), her severe white blouse buttoned and creased neatly over her neck.

"You're late." She said neutrally, and before he could compose a reply, had strode across the room. The palm of her hand struck his cheek with a sharp, satisfactory sound that caught and echoed in the corners of the room, leaving blood to rush to the surface in vivid colors.

"I don't suppose, then," he said, touching his fingers to his cheek in an absent gesture, "that you'll accept the fact that my employers wanted me to work late as an excuse again?"

"You could," she rejoined evenly, "find better excuses than that. It's not as though you're such a fool that you cannot compose them." When he did not reply, she swept on, calmly, speaking with the assured exactitude of an architect, building. "Why do you sleep with girls all the time?" She watched him; the hard lines of his face yielding into something honey-smooth. "I've heard the sense of mastery in sleeping with other men is greater. And surely you've gone to enough women to be bored of the same thing all the time."

He was not fool enough to lie – which left her with no excuse to strike him. Turning his face towards her, his eyes half-lidded and amused, he smiled, a slow, delighted expression. His gaze was dark and empty, unchanged. "And what makes you think that I've been unfaithful to you?"

"Out at all hours of the night," Her head leaned against the bedpost, mouth making a line in parallel to the strong stroke of color that the wood presented in the dark. "Coming back with red on your shirt. I'm not /stupid, though I did marry you."

"You have an appallingly suspicious mind." He told her, though he sounded pleased.

"I live with you." She said coldly, wrapping her hands over each other in a neat, uncomplicated gesture, knuckles jutting like knifepoints. "It seems to make itself, somehow. And you haven't answered my question."

"Perhaps I have." His fingers settled over the first pearl button at his throat; he quirked his brows at her in a silent question that went unanswered. Appearing unconcerned by her apathy, he drew each fastening out in gradual, drifting motions, and shrugged. The material slid from his shoulders, inch by inch, until he stood in the middle of the room before the mirror bare-chested, his eyes secure on her face. "Sleeping with men, at least, will not make as many complicated marks on the clothing for my wife to note when I come home."

"So you haven't."

He seemed to rouse from a dream, then, hands splaying outwards with a dancer's careful grace as he lifted his eyes to fix her where she stood as he moved sleekly towards her, the bed. "Not yet. But shall I, and tell you what it's like?"

Her hand snapped out, keeping an arm's length's distance between them as he neared. Her palm was secure against his body, and the touch was too familiar – it irritated her, as it always had. "Not everything," she said crisply, "depends on sleeping with someone to be interesting. You've been married too long."

He seemed entirely unworried by her words, only shook out his dark hair until it spilled around and over his waist, curling softly around the band of his pressed trousers. His hand bent over her wrist, removing the obstacle between them as he leaned forward to kiss her. "Is this a statement that you'll leave me, then? Shall I go find someone else to court?"

"I suppose you already have twelve prospects in mind."

"Not so many," he said, amused. In the shadows his eyes glittered like light on a hunter's arsenal. "You judge yourself too harshly. I do still love you, you know."

She bit down against her teeth, feeling the pressure as a welcome release. "So you say." She responded grimly. And then a light, trilling sound interspersed the atmosphere between them, coaxing its high-pitched notes into a tune akin to "Death Comes A-Stalkin'".

Both their heads snapped down to examine the source of the noise. He turned and bent, swifter than thought, to ruffle through her purse from which the noise came. But she had learned that trick too, and in the middle of the handbag their hands met, his skin hot on hers in a startling touch. Nevertheless, her fingers remained securely clasped around it, and after a moment he withdrew his hand from the bag, hand cocked to the side in an odd, disjointed fashion.

"Have I broken your hand?" She inquired dispassionately.

He did not reply, only smiled, deliberate and warm as he angled his head to place a kiss at the juncture where her jaw melted into her throat.

"You seem," he murmured against her skin, "to have business yourself. I wonder who it's with?"

She pushed him away, ignoring the faint sound of mocking distress pulled from his mouth. He leaned back on his knuckles to watch her face, lit by the eerie light of the cellphone as her eyes skimmed across its message. "Something very important, then?" He inquired languidly as she stood, smoothing her skirt in a single, economical gesture that made her presentable again.

"I wouldn't know." The woman retorted, her words precise, each syllable biting into existence. "It's more important than you – but I suppose that doesn't tell you very much. Safe to say that I might need to work late myself." There was no venom, no heat in her speech; only a carelessness full of precarious thorns and dangers that could not all be circumvented. "Try not to stain the new carpet, Hao."

He turned, a last dazzling smile to hold in her memory of home. "I thought you trusted me," he said, "not to be a fool. You break my heart, Anna."

He did not speak with the intent of wanting a reply, and so she did not give him one, but stepped past him, out into the world again. The door swung shut with a meticulous clack behind her, and when the last of her footsteps had died away, Hao beamed mildly at the empty room before picking up the telephone. His fingers flew across the dials, tapping out each number with all the scrupulous manners of a pianist at his instrument.

It rang once, twice.

Someone answered.

"Hello?" He said warmly into the receiver, his fingers pale as the heart of a flame in the moonlight as he walked to the windows to see her car shifting out of the driveway. "Yes, darling, she's gone. For quite a while, it seems. And it occurred to me that you've never seen my house before, with her always around--" The other speaker said something, an indistinct purr, and he laughed, his fingers twisting deliberately in the cord before clenching, as if he held a throat.

"Yes." He murmured, his eyes dark in the reflections of the open windowpanes. "Ten minutes is fine. It can't be soon enough."

-

Her car – black, lustrous – slid into an open parking space and she stepped out, her heels clicking wetly against the pavement. Behind her, a Rolls Royce's driver shouted indistinctly from behind his tinted glass windows, stuttering to a halt as his gaze identified her expression. She permitted herself a tiny smile, her features untouched, and paced into the restaurant. It had been lit with old, waxy candles. Another pretension at quality, and Italian atmospherics, neither of which impressed her particularly, though it emphasized the reasoning behind the client. The information had been instructive, and painstakingly exact: clearly Tamao was doing her job better than Anna had anticipated.

The waiter sniffed at the faint smell of rain emanating from her skirts, his features composing into haughtiness as he inquired as to whether she had a reservation.

"I believe Marco will have told you that he's waiting for someone." She said impersonally. "That someone would be me."

Seconds later, they moved to the end of the maze of tables, to where the man waited. As she seated herself, the man who had served as her guide bobbed up to one side, his face pale and fixed upon the man seated opposite. "I meant no offense, madam," he said, his nods quick and furious, "it's only that we have a great deal of worthless folk wandering about trying to get a reservation in and they usually come in as you do. We had no idea that Marco's guest would prefer to enter as they do—"

"Get out of my sight." She murmured pleasantly, and watched the waiter skitter away before turning her attention to the man who had invited her to dinner.

He was tall, though it was less evident when both parties were seated, and strong-boned, though unnervingly so. (Be wary, he had told her: be afraid if he suspects anything. You won't be the first person we've sent to negotiate who's had the negotiations go horribly wrong. I don't want you killed, Anna. You don't deserve to die just yet.)

But he had not told her that Marco was strangely handsome, in a thin-faced way that seemed to bespeak the manners of a convert, a religious man who was fanatically dedicated to the duties that it bestowed upon him. He had not told her that the man was /attractive, in a strange way; charisma, she supposed, and she should have known better than to be influenced by such a quality when she lived with such a someone.

Then, he might not have seen the need to; it wasn't as though she'd ever mentioned being attracted to anyone save her husband, which would have been an awkward business. And it was not as if she were attracted to this Marco: but a notation of what weapons he had brought to the table. (She, for instance, had managed to pack five knives under her skirt, and an explosive hairpin that Tamao had insisted she take as a last resort, looped in her hair, pinning it back.)

"So," he said curtly, smiling a thin, brittle smile. "You would be the secretary that they have sent to negotiate?"

"After a fashion." She said offhandedly, feeling the slip into her role begin. "Ah, thank you." And she accepted the cup of wavering tea that he pushed across the table to her, grasping it in one careless hand to take a sip. (His eyes, she noted, were on her mouth against the cup.)

"After a fashion?"

"Well," she said mildly, "I came to set terms. Namely, that you surrender everything – secrets, papers, everything you've been holding over our employer's head – and allow us to do free trade with your company. You would retire a very rich man; although the price for that is that you would retire. You are free to accept the terms or reject them and refuse to do business with us, as you wish. It does not matter to my employers particularly which you do."

He stared at her a moment, then began to laugh. "Ah, you are playing a joke on me, Mrs. Asakura. You know very well that your employers need what I and my little company do more than anything else in the world." He smiled a little to himself. "Are you very important to your company, Mrs. Asakura? I speak as one questioning the situation: I don't want to discuss company business with a flunkie, you see. I would not like to reveal your employer's secrets to the world."

"I think," she murmured dreamily, leaning her elbows against the table in a silly, slurring manner, "that I am very important indeed. Ver' ver'. He tells me everything, you know."

"I see. And can you tell me, then, why he has done such a foolish thing as to set terms on /me?"

"Well," she began thoughtfully, rising from her seat to move towards his side of the table in a dreamy sidle, "I can't tell you for sure, seeing as how I can't read minds, but… I think…" A hand settled over his shoulders, and he twisted back to smile pleasantly at her face. Abruptly, his expression dimmed to a wince, fraught with shock as he caught sight of a gleam in her hand.

"I think," she went on, but in a voice that was much sharper as it slid a knife against his ribs, "that you put a sedative in my tea and were hoping to get a hostage out of the dinner."

"You can hardly blame me." He bit out, his eyes narrowing again. The attraction in his features vanished with the wary stillness of panic, and in the back of her head she thought ah. He was different from her employer, from Hao, after all; lesser. "It was the perfect opportunity. You do realize I have only to shout?"

"At which point I would gut you. I would merely be imprisoned, possibly with a bail in my future. You, on the other hand, would be dead. You asked whether I was important," she told him neutrally. "I answered you that I was – because I was the one selected to carry out your death if you refused the conditions. My employer is no more the fool than I am in matters of business: I am good enough at my job to do this."

"Please." He whispered, his breath caught, his eyes wide as they skittered over her face, divining for mercy and finding only intent. "Please, my dear, surely you can't mean to /kill/ me."

Anna considered this. Then, deliberately, she tucked the knife back into one of the hidden pockets in her skirts, saw the flicker of relief in his face, and smiled faintly.

"Actually," she said, "I do." Her hands came up without warning; she had rubbed dust carefully into the glass to ensure that no advancing gleam would give it away. The serum drained from the needle into his back as his hands scrabbled over the wooden arms of his chair to find some way to bring him out of the situation, but he was too late. The wheezing gasp was muted in the mumbling incoherency of the restaurant, although unmistakable as she stepped away from the body to survey her handiwork.

It was a tad clumsy, though the police never seemed to check the bodies for puncture marks to ensure that it had not been foul play. It would not matter in the long run; these things were always mistaken for heart attacks, and the police seemed to dislike exhuming bodies on crackpot theories still less than they did checking for punctures. She was safe enough.

Her cell phone rang again, and this time she answered it, curtly. Only a few people had the number, and only one ever called.

"It's done."

"Thank you, Anna. I did hate to ask you to do it, but there was no other way."

"You never call me unless there's no other way."

"You sound bitter, Anna." But there was only a light, teasing note in the words; no condescension or disdain. "Do you wish to kill more people?"

She was striding towards the women's restrooms, where, she remembered from the floor plans she had studied, there were windows to the outdoors. "I am in your employment. You have only to name them and I'll kill them. It's what I do."

"What a bloodthirsty person you are."

"Yes," she said, pushing the door open. The tiles clicked dryly with her movements as she paced across the floor to study the vent-like structures. Then, deliberately, she leapt up in a catlike motion, catching her feet on the sill. "But I'm your bloodthirsty person, for which you should be grateful."

"I've forgotten," he commented, "whether I'm employing you or you're merely keeping me for entertainment."

"Both." She replied, and snapped the cell phone shut as she tumbled out of the window.

To be continued

Feedback: Is eaten up with small delicate spoons the color of crystal, and savored. I have a great weakness for it.