My Interpreter Mistranslates Every Threat novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Man Who Wouldn't Pay

Yan was at the pillar before Lu Wen could speak.

He found a cigarette end on the concrete and nothing else.

"Someone has what they came for," he said, coming back. "Photographs, I expect."

"Of what?"

"Of a chairman and an interpreter in a car park."

He said it flatly, and then his composure slipped.

"I should send you home in the car. I would like very much not to."

Lu Wen looked at the empty pillar, and at the suspension notice glowing in his hand.

Lu Ning would be waiting in the kitchen at Yangpu, and she read his face better than anyone alive.

He did not want her to read it tonight.

"Take me somewhere with a door," he said.

The flat on the fifty-second floor had a wall of glass and almost nothing else.

There was one grey sofa, one lamp, a table with no chairs, and a rice cooker still in its box on the kitchen counter.

Yan switched on the lamp and did not seem to know what to do with his hands.

"I haven't lived here much," he said.

"I can see that."

Below them the river ran black between two banks of light.

Lu Wen stood with his back to it and found his own voice rather steady.

"They suspended me," he said. "They'll photograph us. I should be afraid."

"Are you?"

"I'm afraid of one thing," said Lu Wen. "I'm afraid you'll be sensible in the morning."

Yan crossed the floor and stopped one pace away, close enough that Lu Wen could smell the cold on his coat.

"In the lift you asked me a question," he said. "Threat or request."

"I remember."

"It was a request. It was always a request. I am going to make another, and I am going to say it in Norvane."

"Term two," said Lu Wen. "You're warning me."

"I'm warning you."

Yan bent his head until his mouth was near Lu Wen's ear.

He said it in the slow, rough speech of the docks.

In Chinese it meant: I have wanted you since the first lift, and I have no plan for it.

His voice broke on the last word.

"Translate this," Yan said.

"I won't cut it," said Lu Wen, and kissed him.

It was nothing like the car park.

There was no anger in it, and no hurry.

Yan's hand came up under his jaw and held his face, and the glass was cold against Lu Wen's shoulders.

"I should say it plainly," Yan said against his mouth. "I have never done this. I have never taken anyone home."

He drew back an inch so Lu Wen could see his face.

"I am thirty-four, and I would like you to know it before you decide."

"I haven't either," said Lu Wen.

"No?"

"I was busy." He laughed, unsteadily.

"I raised a sister and I learned a language. I never met a person I wanted to give my whole attention."

His hand lay flat on Yan's chest.

"And now I have nothing else left to look at."

Yan made a low sound, and they moved without ever deciding to.

The bedroom held a bed, a lamp and a window, and the sheets had never been slept in.

Yan sat on the edge of the mattress and Lu Wen stood between his knees.

The buttons of Lu Wen's shirt were small, and Yan's fingers were not steady.

He took a long time over the first, and it was the longest Lu Wen had ever waited for anything.

"You are shaking," Lu Wen said softly.

"I command a company of nine thousand people."

"You are still shaking."

"Yes," said Yan. "Don't stop me."

The shirt slid from Lu Wen's shoulders.

Yan looked at him in the lamplight, openly and for a long time, and then laid his mouth against the hollow of his collarbone.

Lu Wen's fingers closed in his hair.

Neither of them had much to say after that.

Clothes came away in a clumsy, impatient order.

There was skin, and the warm weight of another body, and a low shock when their bare chests met.

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