Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BAD AUGUST
UNFORTUNATELY CANNOT READ MINDS
Iwant to kiss him more than I want the sun to rise tomorrow. August and all his beautiful ideas about space. I need to play this off somehow.
“I bet you cry when you think about rovers too,” I joke.
I love the laugh it pulls from him, even if he looks a little sad when he turns his eyes back down to the city lights. “I don’t know about cry. But I think about them more than I probably should. It must be so lonely up there on Mars.”
I laugh too, softly. “They’re not sentient, you know?”
“I know, but… their little tracks in the dirt. The thought of their solar panels thickening with dust. Then one day, after all that work they’ve done for us, their little lights go out, and it’s just…
silence. Forever. And they sit there. And our lives go on.
And we forget about them. And they just sit there. ”
Fucking hell. He has my heart in a vise. “You’re killing me.” I say it so it sounds like it’s in jest. Another lie.
Another laugh. “Sorry. I’m being morbid.”
“Don’t be sorry. You make me remember all the reasons I got into this.
I used to see it all the way you do now.
That it was this big, majestic secret. And I think I still do, deep down.
I just… I went a little too deep. A lot too deep.
And I lost sight of the big picture. It’s been nice to be reminded. ”
His head tilts towards me, a distinct twinkle in his eyes. A spark of… mischief? “When was the last time you just… had some fun?”
“Me?” Stupid question. Who else but me? “A long time.” Literally years. Years and years. Years of maths and failure and death.
His finger slips away from mine when he pulls his legs in close and swivels around to face me. “Listen. I don’t want you to go.”
I try to act as though those words don’t mean the entire universe to me by giving a shrug. “We have to sleep sometime.”
“No, I don’t mean that. I don’t want you to leave here. My reality. I know it hasn’t been long, but it’s been… nice.”
Yeah. If getting your heart ripped out and trampled on hourly could be called ‘nice.’
Yet I have to concede, “It has been.”
“Seems stupid, then, if you’re only here for a while, to just go sit in your bunker…” He glances down at the city. “I mean… I’m not tired. Are you tired?”
“No.” I could easily stay up here with him all night, if we wouldn’t freeze to death sometime around two a.m.
“And did you know…” When he leans in close, all I see are visions of me kissing him, of me pushing him down on the wet grass, us fucking on the top of this hill, right here in the open. The way I’d worship every inch of him until the sun came up over London. I’d do anything he wanted.
But unfortunately for me, he only extends his arm, and points. “That’s our old place, just there.”
“Kentish down? Just there?” It’s nothing but a small conglomeration of yellowy lights where he’s pointing, and I have no chance of making out our old flat in the dark, but it’s nice to know it’s so close.
Some piece of the two of us. Some London history that spans across different realities, that we shared, almost as though we lived there together.
A pin drop in time and space that marks ‘us.’
“I had no idea we’re so close to it. But we got the Jubilee Line out. Where even are we?”
He looks at me with an amused frown. “Primrose Hill.”
“What?”
“Yeah, we’re just… Didn’t you ever come up here?”
“Not once.”
“Call yourself a Londoner.”
“Not anymore.”
“Back over there,” he points past my shoulder, “is my place. But down there,” his arm stretches out, “is Camden.” With that last word, he raises an eyebrow and adds a cheeky grin. “You know, I’ve just had the best idea.”
“Oh, have you? Just now? Just this exact second?”
He ignores my insinuation, speaking casually, “It’s about a fifteen-minute walk. Ten if we’re fast.”
“And what did you have in mind?”
“Just a drink or two. Nothing outrageous. We’ll have you back in your basement by midnight.”
Bad idea.
Very bad idea.
“I don’t want to miss the last train.”
“God, no. That would be terrible.” He climbs to his feet. “You’d have to stumble back home to my place, drunk. We might even have to catch the dawn up here in the cold along the way. Sounds awful.”
“Awful,” I mutter, even if my skin’s on fire at the idea he might have had a similar vision to the one that’s just assailed me: him riding my cock, rasping my name, me fisting his dick until he comes all over that nice tight shirt of his as the sun dawns on a new day.
He holds his hand out. “Will you come?”
“What?”
“Will you come?”
“What?”
“August, will you come to Camden with me? Right now? Please?”
“Um…” Really a very bad and terrible idea. Awful.
But I’m so flustered by that filthy scene in my mind I can hardly talk. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess… w-we could…”
“Perfect.” He grabs my hand, and before I can think up an excuse, he’s pulled me to my feet, and I have to run to not fall after him as he sprints down Primrose Hill.