Last Violent Call (Secret Shanghai, #3.5)(41)
The man shook his head. Where Marshall thought the stranger had been making an expression of surprise earlier while remarking on the ongoing argument, he was now realizing that the man had permanently large eyes, pulled wide and expressive no matter the topic.
“I had a peek earlier when the door was open: this is a solo compartment. Only a visitor, not a roommate.” At that, there was a grumble from within his room, a voice asking him to keep it down, and the man peered inside, nose wrinkling. “Wish I could afford a solo compartment too. I am Stepan Maximovich Ivanov. You are?”
“Just Marshall,” Marshall replied nicely. Ever since their move to Moscow, it had been amusing for him to make up different patronymics each time he met someone new, since he hardly cared to adopt his real father’s name into his own by Russian custom. But this train ride was going to be seven days long, and he didn’t want to lose track of the names he was giving to his fellow passengers, nor did he have the commitment to pick a favorite false one. Besides, when they exchanged vows, Benedikt had refused to let him change his Korean last name, saying that he was going to take it too and he wouldn’t accept anything else. If Marshall came up with a proper Russian alias, he would make Benedikt upset.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” the man—Stepan—said. “Do excuse me now, I must shut up for my traveling companion.” He slid his compartment door closed, and Marshall proceeded back into his own room, inhaling the steam that was drifting from his thermos full of boiling water.
When Marshall returned, Benedikt was sitting on the lower bunk, bent over his sketchbook. He had a smudge of pencil on his chin, smeared in a half circle, as if he had pressed a finger there in thought without realizing there was graphite all over his hand. It made a typical sight: whenever Benedikt lost himself in his art, the world would cease to exist around him. Marshall might be able to get an answer out of him if he was asking what he wanted for dinner, but as much as Marshall loved chatter, he never wanted to keep pushing for conversation if Benedikt was concentrating hard. Marshall preferred watching him instead—watching his mouth purse in thought as he measured dimensions, watching small wrinkles appear at the side of his eyes while he narrowed his gaze to study what he had already put down.
The only time that Marshall had interrupted Benedikt without remorse had been two years ago, for his quiet, unplanned, “Will you marry me?” They had been sitting in the living room, tending to separate tasks. Early evening, the purple sunset outside bleeding its shadows along the carpet. A warming April, the window left open a crack to offset the district heating.
“What?” Benedikt had asked suddenly, seeming to doubt whether he had heard correctly.
“I know there’s no one here to attend a wedding,” Marshall went on, “and it would be a bad idea to get legal papers in the event that we are endangered. Nonetheless, even if we officiate it ourselves in a garden somewhere, I wanted to ask. Will you marry me?”
Benedikt had stared at him for what felt like eons. He remained unspeaking for long enough that Marshall twitched, a layer of sweat prickling at his neck. The pipes in the house started to splutter, and Marshall, too, added, “It’s okay if you don’t want—”
Then Benedikt lunged over, shaking him by the shoulders to interrupt. “Yes. Of course. Of course it’s a yes. You just took me by surprise.” He paused, touching a finger to Marshall’s forehead and looking delighted to find a sheen of cold sweat. “Mars.”
Marshall swatted at his hand. “Stop that. I’m just warm.”
“Now you know how I felt the first time I said I loved you.”
“Oh, absolutely not. You yelled at me, Ben.”
“Fondly!”
Marshall couldn’t resist laughing then. He couldn’t resist wrapping his arms around Benedikt as tightly as he could, because it was unimaginable that they had ended up here, unimaginable that they had been removed from so much, yet the thing he’d wanted most had been granted. Through their youth, he would have been glad to have Benedikt by his side forever and ever as his best friend; he would have been content to keep his feelings to himself if Benedikt had never returned them, gratified just to ache from a distance. But he didn’t have to. He didn’t have to.
“I needed to be the one to ask,” he had murmured into Benedikt’s neck, still clutching onto their embrace. “Who knows whether you might have waited another ten years like the first time.”
Benedikt looked up now in the train compartment, his lashes blinking golden even in the terrible lighting.
“What?” he asked suddenly, a perfect echo to Marshall’s memory.
Marshall set down the thermos and walked closer, coming to a stop beside Benedikt and propping one arm on the wooden structure of the top bunk. The beds were made with the lower bunk jutting a bit farther out, so that Benedikt wouldn’t hit his head while he sat there, his face tilted up to look at Marshall looming over him.
With a careful hand, Marshall brushed away the graphite smear.
“You have something here.”
“Do I?” Benedikt asked. His chin was clean again. “Did you get it?”
“No,” Marshall lied, already leaning down. “Don’t move, I’ll try again.”
When he kissed him, it was like breathing a deep gulp of summer air, like the first fall of snow landing crisp and cold on his skin. Marshall Seo was fundamentally a temperamental person: a fast driver, a reckless fighter, prone to taking leaps off of three-story buildings instead of finding the stairs. But Benedikt grounded him. Benedikt Montagov moved through the world with such intricate care—his steps calculated, his thought process tunneling miles deep—that Marshall would stick around for ten lifetimes trying to figure him out.