Last Violent Call (Secret Shanghai, #3.5)(39)
Marshall was quick to protest the accusation, making a scowl. The two of them alone at last, Benedikt finally felt some of the weight lift off his shoulders, his tense mood fading away. They were on board. The train would release its whine of steam and begin to move when the clock struck the minute of departure, and nothing was going to go wrong.
Benedikt reached out, a hand sliding along the back of Marshall’s neck, then up, up, into his thick crop of hair. When his fingers threaded in, Benedikt felt all his remaining tension bleed away from his spine, slithering to the floor like a shed skin.
“I’m joking, Mars. If you decide to sleep on the separate bunk, I’m going to assume our relationship is under strain.”
In a flash, Marshall’s scowl turned into a grin. “Relax, I’m only pretending. Don’t forget”—there was a glint in his eye when he tapped a finger to the inside of Benedikt’s wrist, right at the point where his pulse was beating—“you were the one who admitted you were in love with me first. You can’t fool me.”
Benedikt rolled his eyes, removing his hand with a huff, but his chest warmed a few degrees nevertheless.
Sometimes Benedikt didn’t know how to handle the extent of the feelings living in his heart. Almost five years had passed with his love in the open instead of trapped in the dark, and it would still blink its bewildered eyes when it was seen clearly, surprised to have been acknowledged. He had assumed that there wouldn’t be much change: he had grown up with Marshall Seo, after all; he had already been sharing an apartment and most of his life with him before Marshall went and faked his death and drove Benedikt to such depths of anguish that everything he had pushed down and down and down came surging to the surface.
But there was a stark difference between Marshall’s patient, controlled love, burning on low while he waited for Benedikt to shake himself into order, and Marshall’s unabashed love, given the kindling to blaze. It was the whisper of contact when he grabbed Marshall’s shoulder to say goodbye leaving their apartment in Shanghai, contrasted with the whole-body hug that Marshall gave him at the doorway of their smaller one-bedroom in Moscow, laughing when Benedikt said he absolutely had to go and laughing harder when Benedikt didn’t actually attempt to extricate himself. It was a longing glance across the kitchen in the days before, measured against reaching over the counter without hesitation now—thumbs brushing along cheekbones, legs flung over laps, lips colliding and colliding with the softest impact.
He had never even considered what he was missing until he had it. He couldn’t imagine the same thrill replicated with anyone other than Marshall.
When he thought about it too much, though, everything existing inside him felt so big that he was sure his veins had outgrown their circulatory system and were seconds away from pushing out of his skin. At present, he couldn’t deal with any of the onslaught except by giving Marshall a great, big shove, exhibiting his emotions with a physical whack!
“Ow,” Marshall complained, even though it didn’t hurt. He shuffled a few steps before regaining his balance. “Please treat your lover with more tender care.”
Benedikt unlatched his luggage case—this time, at least, it was to unpack rather than to check the contents for the umpteenth time.
“I thought you were my roommate.”
“We can’t be roommates who kiss?”
Benedikt threw a rolled-up pair of socks at his husband. “Unpack, Mars.”
With a laugh, Marshall hauled his luggage case onto one of the side tables and started to shake his clothes free. The two of them usually lived quite simply, given that their only source of income came from teaching art classes to little kids in the neighborhood. Benedikt did the actual teaching; Marshall did the bookkeeping and the advertising, plastering posters on every streetlamp. Surprisingly, they did get enough parents flowing in and out to subsist off the earnings.
These train tickets hadn’t come from those earnings, though. They had come from Benedikt’s cousin, Roma, who was running an illegal weapons ring with his wife in a small township a few hours outside of Shanghai—a business in which he and Juliette most certainly made ten times more than what Benedikt and Marshall did. Typical of two former gang heirs to walk away from that life and then somehow wander back into it anyway, just without the intergenerational blood feud.
“I cannot emphasize the severity of this situation enough,” Roma had said after giving his instructions, his voice tight over the phone. “Someone’s life depends on it. I need your help to get Lourens into Zhouzhuang as soon as possible.”
“Who’s someone?” Benedikt had asked out of curiosity, holding the receiver tight against his ear and furrowing his brow, glancing at Marshall across the room. Marshall hadn’t been paying attention at first when Benedikt picked up the call, but he’d looked up fast as soon as he realized it was Roma on the other end of the line. Roma or Juliette usually had set times that they called so that they wouldn’t be missed—and Marshall and Juliette certainly hated missing their gossiping sessions—so the telephone ringing with an unscheduled call from Zhouzhuang was unexpected.
“Have you been reading Shanghai’s newspapers recently?”
Benedikt scrunched his nose. He tried to avoid bringing newspapers into the house if they were reporting on international news: the last thing Marshall needed was to see his father’s face without warning.