#personally I would not be arguing with any pissy England in heels - even without the knife being included

[shachaai]

for the AU mix it up, if you want! Assassin AU + Soulmate AU + psychic connection AU! (for EngCan or FrUk? :D, please if you want!)

I went with fruk for this one, and it was a toss-up between this piece or a later piece set in the same ‘verse with them arguing about the Compare The Market meerkats. I’m not sorry. It’s more thieves than assassins here, but please just take it as ‘how not to recruit your soulmate to a shady black market organisation.’May tackle the engcan at another time.

   If someone were to, before this disastrous evening began, have forced Francis to guess which of the many people he was to interact with that night at the gala would be most likely to pull a blade on him and shove it through his shoulder with enough force to hit the wall behind him, Francis would not have placed his bets on the nearly-naked male dancer with the incredibly pert bottom - even after watching the man sneak away from the other entertainers at the gala and following him to the restricted area. If only because, wearing only heels and a particularly strappy body harness, Francis could not figure out where the dancer had been concealing his knife.

Both the thud of Francis hitting the wall and his strangled yelp of pain are muffled by the music and crowds of the gala they have absconded from, a hand tight over Francis’ mouth sealing the deal with a knee pressing dangerously hard against his crotch.

The library where Francis had followed the dancer to is dark, save city lights coming in through a thin crack in the curtains. Grabbed coming in from the lit hallway, Francis’ eyesight is still adjusting to the library’s dim - an amateur’s mistake, making him almost (but only almost) deserving of his circumstances for underestimating the scantily-dressed.

(He could never have fully deserved a knife through his shoulder, though it seems to have missed the bone, puncturing through layers of cloth and skin. For the sake of all things holy - his suit is Versace.)

The curve of a shadowed cheek moves not far from Francis’ face, a low, angry voice inquiring: “Did your mother never teach you not to harass the staff at work?”

“You,” Francis mutters as he contemplates the nerve damage his shoulder with suffer if he goes for his own concealed blade, idly hating how garbled his voice comes out through a grabbing hand (it is ruining the beautiful enunciation everyone he hates hates him for) but primarily concerned with the matter where his whole body is trying not to cringe because he is impaled to the wall and his shoulder feels like it is on fire, “do not look like the one who is being harassed here.”

The dancer does not look at all like he has understood anything that Francis has just said. Francis can see him better now as his eyes adapt to his surroundings, his assailant a contrast of shadows with pinpricks of city light picking out wispy strands of his dark blond hair, the perplexed blink of his eyelashes.

He’s not meant to be here either, something whispers in the middle of the white-hot pain trying to overtake Francis’ mind, which is a ridiculous observation for Francis to make now. Of course the dancer should not be in this library; he’d snuck away from the gala to the off-limits area in the exact way that Francis had been meaning to sneak away from the gala right before he had been distracted by the dancer sneaking away first.

God, if any of Francis’ colleagues could see him now. Gilbert would shoot this mongrel and then never let Francis forget it. Antonio would… Francis is not entirely sure what Antonio would do, to be honest, but he would certainly let Francis put his head down in his lap and pet Francis’ hair very consolingly afterwards, because Antonio is many things, primarily confusing, but he is a darling. Francis sometimes wishes that at least one of them might have turned out to be his soulmate, one of the ones great cosmic justice has decided should be able to hear his innermost thoughts (and vice versa): Antonio, if only so Francis could understand what thoughts went through his friend and occasional lover’s mind, and Gilbert so he could end Gilbert’s ruthless teasing by threatening the other man to think of nothing but French love songs all day until Gilbert gives him some peace. But at first touch, when they had all first met each other… nothing. Their thoughts had remained firmly each their own.

“If you scream…” the dancer murmurs warningly - and does not say what would happen if Francis screams, though the weight of his hand and knee increases on the knife in Francis’ shoulder and on Francis crotch respectively. For someone with such lovely long legs, he has very sharp knees. Francis disapproves of them utterly, especially when applied to his own genitalia. (Francis refuses to die at the hands of someone who is too pointy.)

Refusing to humiliate himself with further garbled mutterings through a palm, Francis attempts to communicate through his eyes alone that he is not planning to scream. It is quite clear to both of them that neither of them are up to any good, and neither of them want to attract the attention of the gala’s security.

The dancer’s hand slips away from his mouth, down to his chin.

Francis smiles. Not kindly. “My suit, connard.”

Really? says the dancer’s expression, loud enough Francis practically hears the word in his head.

“It is Versace,” Francis hisses, having to breathe more heavily through his nose now. His shirt, jacket and waistcoat all stick to his skin, warm with his own blood. “And you have put two holes through the jacket! Do you know how much this outfit costs?”

“I couldn’t give a rat’s ass,” the other man snaps back at him, and Francis feels the angry huff of his breath warm against his neck. If the coarseness didn’t give it away, the crispness of his accent does - Francis has had the misfortune to be stabbed by an Englishman. The universe hates him. “Why were you following me?”

“Why were you sneaking away?” Francis counters, and lets his fingers - slowly - twitch towards his belt. “You think I don’t know you shouldn’t be here either? You were too furtive leaving the party.”

He’s good, Francis’ thoughts murmur and there is something about that -

“So - what?” the dancer scoffs, and Francis would rather like to knee him in the crotch. “You figured you’d follow the dancer in a skimpy costume and blackmail them into sex because you think they’re up to no good?”

Francis is insulted enough his hand pauses groping for his knife. “Stabbing someone into a wall seems rather like the actions of a guilty conscience, do you not think?”

“Self-defence,” claims the dancer, blandly enough Francis knows the shit is lying through his teeth. “I was assaulted by a stalkerish pervert.”

Pervert! Francis bares his teeth, the muscles of his neck going taut in his flash of irritation and making his shoulder shriek in agony. “If this is self-defence, salope, why are you not calling for security?”

I really wish, the voice murmurs in France’s head again, somewhere between exasperated and wistful, that I’d just hit him with the encyclopaedia.

Francis… Francis is nowhere near the encyclopaedias? His brow wrinkles, confused at his own random thoughts. He was supposed to have been in and out tonight: mingling at the gala until he could sneak away to the restricted area and steal the documents his client badly wanted and was willing to pay so much for. The dancer had not been part of the plan. A stabbing had not been planned. A stabbing should not jumble his processing like this unless the blade had been coated in some kind of illicit substance -

“I don’t use poison,” the dancer snaps at him, sounding aggrieved, and Francis can see his features better now, thick eyebrows, eyes liquid black from his pupils and a surprisingly lovely mouth twisted into an extremely unlovely scowl. “If I want someone dead that badly, it’s quick.”

The air freezes in Francis’ lungs, a feeling like something cold and sludgy slipping down his back.

I did not, he thinks, slowly, clearly, and as precisely as he can think with everything suddenly feeling incredibly numb, say anything about poison out loud.

Francis did not. Poison or not, he is in control of his own mouth - he has to be, for his own sanity.

“What sanity?” the dancer asks snippily. “I’m not deaf, and you definitely said -”

“Meeting my soulmate was supposed to be romantic,” Francis mourns, completely ignoring the denial in front of him and all the outrage that earns him. The universe is in the process of kicking him - hard! - when he is already down, so Francis feels fully entitled to complain. “You stabbed me - I was going to be suave!”

Do you even know the meaning of the word? the voice - the dancer’s voice, becoming increasingly familiar the more Francis hears it - asks in Francis’ mind, and if Francis were not currently impaled to a wall, he would put his face in his hands and weep. His soulmate is English. The voice he is going to be stuck with, narrating all of its innermost thoughts to Francis for the rest of his life - unless he kills his soulmate first - is English.

Francis might be a corporate spy, occasional assassin, and extremely good thief, but he has done nothing to deserve this.

“You are not my soulmate!” the dancer hisses at him, sounding as disgusted at the arrangement as Francis is.

Francis has no time for further denial. He has papers to steal, and would rather like to have the knife out of his shoulder - and either the name of his newfound soulmate or his soulmate’s knife through his neck, putting the both of them out of this misery.

“Put your hand on my mouth again.”

The dancer rears back a little. “If this is some kind of kink - ”

“Put your hand back on my mouth, salope. Then you will know I cannot be talking out loud when you hear me think.”

Black eyes glower at Francis, but the palm that had been resting on his chin claps itself back over his lips again.

So you can be trained, Francis thinks, as clearly and loudly as he can.

The eyes in front of him widen, and the dancer shivers - a full-body thing. In only his harness, he really must be cold.

“Fuck you,” he says. And thinks: I’m not paying for your suit.

“You’re buying me a new one,” says Francis, and smiles grimly at the resignation that flashes across the face in front of him. Even better is the realisation that Francis hears echo in his mind, clear, dry English that is already becoming far too familiar:

God, he is my soulmate. And then after a few stunned moments: I want a refund.