Doppelbänger

Chapter 20 #2

“It’s not obvious,” she responds way too loudly, bringing the whole mess out onto the table. “This is a very complex situation.”

“Yeah, so maybe they don’t want you asking about it,” Tico throws out, and I could absolutely kiss him for it.

Then Dave pipes up. “But…” And my stomach clenches at his tone. “I don’t mean August and August… but just in general… if you’re seeing yourself…” I look very hard at him, but his eyes are drifting over the ceiling as he gathers his thoughts, finalising them with, “isn’t that incest?”

“No!” August and I shout at exactly the same time, and he turns as pink as I probably have at the outburst.

Thank god Amber is there with, “They’re not related, you know.”

“That’s exactly right,” I say.

“Not cousins,” August puts in.

“But you do have the same parents,” Dave pursues.

“That’s a very good point,” Tico adds.

“But they’re still not related,” says Shashi.

“Aren’t they?” asks Dave.

I’m very close to exploding when Amber throws out, “It’s really more like masturbation.”

“Masturbation on a grand scale,” Shashi concurs enthusiastically.

That’s about the time my soul leaves my body. I’m ready. I’m ready to be dead and gone and floating off to Heaven or Hell or Purgatory, or wherever universe-destroying megalomaniacs end up.

Or maybe this is it? Maybe I’m dead and in Hell already. It certainly feels like it.

But truly, no one deserves to be paraded about and judged by Non Jovi and their groupies in a cold basement in the middle of London after an incredibly shitty night, all for one fleeting kiss that, even if it was the best kiss anyone in humanity ever had ever, won’t ever be repeated.

The fake sound of a camera shutter draws my attention. Shashi’s actually photographing my work.

“What is going on?” I pretty much shout, not just at her, but at all of them. “I need to-to-to go to bed and… this place is too small and… there’s a gunman on the loose, and shouldn’t you all be at home, or talking to the police or something?”

“That’s what I said,” Amber offers, then settles in a little deeper with another sip of beer.

Click!

“I did call them,” Richie says.

“Well, maybe you want to call again?” I suggest. “From your house. They might want you to answer questions. Maybe even at the station?”

Click!

“Yeah, I guess we could go to the station,” Dave muses.

“I’m not going back to Camden,” argues Tico.

Click!

“You can’t stay here,” I declare, and Amber gives me such a hurt look, as though we know each other at all, that I feel the need to explain, “There’s no space!”

“Yeah, that’s true.” She sighs as she looks over the even more messy than usual room. “We could all go back to mine.”

“Good idea!” I clap my hands together with finality.

Click!

“Are you coming, August?” She means the other August, but he looks straight at me.

“No,” he says tentatively, holding my eye contact, like he wants me to tell him one way or another. But he needs to go, because if he stays… “I think I’ll stay here?”

“Then I’m staying too,” says Jon.

Fucking hell.

“No. No, there isn’t room… I need to sleep. I…” My hand at my temple, I take in the careless, unbothered faces. “August, can we?” I tilt my head towards the door, and he nods, climbing over half a dozen outstretched legs along the way to follow me.

It’s dark out here by the elevator, but I don’t push the light on. It’s the closest thing to peace I’m going to get, the air cooler, even if it’s musty, fresher than in there.

Lamplight streams out of the doorway to set August’s face aglow when he moves in front of me, head dipped in collusion, eyes a mixture of concerned and happy.

“Can you get them out of here?” I begin.

He has the smallest tremor of a smile when he says, “Of course. Shashi just wanted to take a look. I’ll move them on.

But… um… I can…” My heart pounds out an anxious rhythm while I wait on his words.

His head pops up, and the resolution to give this a shot straightens his shoulders. “I could come back.”

“You should get some sleep.”

Instant crumple.

I try to soften it. “It’s not nice here. And I’m just going to be doing maths. All night. And you should get some sleep.”

“I don’t care. I like doing it.” His smile is so shy. It’s like kicking a Labrador puppy.

I need to tell him he can’t stay. I need to tell him he’s not welcome here. That I don’t want him here. But the words are stuck like my mouth’s full of toffee.

He laughs, the way a person does when they’re swimming through mortification. He dips his head and glances back at the room. Towards his friends. Towards his old life. Towards Jon.

My finger snaps out and hooks his. “Don’t take him home.”

His eyebrows drop, like he’s having trouble processing my words. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“I don’t want you to.” Understanding sharpens the burgeoning light in his eyes. “We need to talk,” I tell him weakly.

“Yeah, we do,” he says, his voice breathy while he takes a little step closer to me. It sets my body on fire. “You could always come back with me? To my place?”

Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

His lips are so kissable I could die. Never in a million years would I have dreamed of a man like this propositioning me. In fact, I haven’t had sex in literally years, and he’s everything my fevered daydreams could imagine. What I’d give for one night with him.

But I have to rebuff him. “I really need to do this. If I can find a way to solve this problem…”

“I understand.” He adds a shy, broken smile. “Maybe… when it’s not so late?”

I nod fiercely.

It feels like he’s just about to step away, when he scrunches his eyes shut tight and breathes out, “Maybe you could come see me tomorrow?”

The perfect solution to any problem: put it off until later.

“Yeah,” I say far too quickly. “I’ll call you.”

“Do you still remember the number?”

I rattle off the digits automatically, almost as though I meditate on them hourly, which maybe I do, and his smile grows big and real.

He reaches forward, takes my other hand, and looks down at it, running small circles over my fingers with his thumb.

His eyes flick up, they lock with mine for one heated moment, then he leans forward and kisses me.

August kissing me.

Not my desperate jealousy at a concert. Not hours of pent-up frustration working itself out in one rash move. It’s a sweet kiss, and a slow kiss. A kiss that says he trusts me to call, to come and see him tomorrow, and that whatever happens after that is okay.

His kiss is so unassuming it makes my black and withered soul want to crumple all around him, hold him safe inside that nasty cocoon, warding off the myriad horrors of the world that could fall all over a man like him.

A man like I used to be. When I still had my soft edges.

My hand tightens on his, and I pull it to my waist, desperate, even for this short time, for his touch on my body. Maybe it will be the last time I ever feel it. I want to keep it, burn it into my skin, think of it to keep me warm for all the empty and loveless years that I know will follow this.

“August,” he says softly, breaking the kiss, dipping his head to mine. “This is madness.”

Maybe it is. But I catch his lips the second the words escape.

One kiss, two, his hands drawing up my sides as he steps backwards, pulling me, until his back hits the wall.

He drops his hand down to my stomach, fingers grazing my skin with a tentative distance that makes me lean into him.

That simple touch has me getting hard for him.

The way I wish I could close the door on all of them, drop to my knees, enjoy him right here.

My kisses move to his neck, giving me a second to try to reassure him. “I don’t want you to think I’m sending you home because I don’t want you here.”

“I’m getting that impression,” he laughs out, moving for my lips again. “But you have science to do.”

“I do have science to do,” I protest beneath another kiss.

He bucks his hips forward, grinding into me. “And that’s fucking hot.”

The words shoot a bolt of electricity through me, and my hand closes over his hip as if he’s operating it with a remote control. “You’re fucking hot.”

“I can’t go home like this,” he begs, grasping at my belt.

So I shift my finger to his lips to quiet him. “You can. And when you get there, you can think about this. And tomorrow, you can tell me what you did about it.”

His breath hitches, sucking air past my finger over his pink and plump and wet lips.

His eyes are dark, his pupils wide in a sparkling sea of gold.

August’s smile widens slowly. It’s mischievous, sexy.

He tilts his head ever so slightly, playing my finger across his lips, over the bow, down to the swell of his bottom lip, until the tip of his tongue finds the tip of my finger.

So warm, so wet, it freezes me in a glorious shudder of delight.

He closes his lips around the tip of my finger and sucks.

Fuck.

This man is pure sex, and I can’t handle him.

My dick’s full and begging for escape, begging for him.

His tongue, my dick, sending vibrations through me that make my body act on autopilot.

I sink my finger a little deeper into the hot dark of his beautiful mouth, and he pulls me in.

The tight blanket of his tongue, the unerring eye contact, is making my knees weak.

He tilts his head a little more, and takes it deeper still.

I pull back slightly, but I can’t resist dipping it again.

His hand wraps tighter around my belt, fingers slipping behind it, and I swear if he touches me I’m going to come on the spot.

“What’s taking so long?” Jon yells.

It’s accompanied by Amber’s slightly hushed, “Leave them alone.”

But I’ve already ripped my finger away.

August captures me at the wrist, then drops a slow kiss on each knuckle, never breaking that too heated eye contact. “Tomorrow?”

“Please.” And it may be the most embarrassing utterance of my entire existence, but it’s also the most genuine.

He’s all I want.

He’s all I’ll ever think about again.

“Okay.” He says it softly, then slips away from me, leaving me with a grey concrete wall, which I dip my head against in frustration.

Of all the mes in all the universes, why did this one have to be walking sex?

While he gathers everyone, I stay out here in the dark, waiting for my erection to go down, hoping no one will see it.

It helps that Jon’s difficult about leaving, the others chiming in about how they just got here.

But August, with Amber and Shashi’s help, steamrolls them, and they’re soon assembling outside the elevator.

I work my way to the back of the room, where August is, but then I feel an unfamiliar grip on my arm. There’s a tug, and my head snaps across. Shashi steps backwards, just inside my room.

It’s all a bit weird, but okay.

I step in there with her, she leans in close, and in a low voice says, “You tell August, or I will.”

The floor drops out from under me. “What?”

“All of what your maths says about how fucked we are?” She looks over at him, where he’s smiling and talking to Amber. “I have the funniest feeling you haven’t told him.”

A sea of ice and me drowning in it, sinking, consumed by bracken-green. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ding! The elevator light throws its sickly glow over the entrance.

“Don’t try to bullshit me, August. You have forty-eight hours. If you haven’t told him, then I will.”

She’s out the door, walking to the elevator like a boss, leaving my whole world crumpling.

They all file in, and August’s beautiful face is the last thing I see. “Bye, August.”

I plaster a smile on. “Bye, August.”

He takes a step backwards, and I get one last glimpse of perfection before I’m left alone in this shitty basement, shut away from him and from life, just like I deserve.

Like I’ve deserved all along.

How does she know?

I scan the calculations. It’s all there. Only how could she see it? She’d need to know the whole story, and even August doesn’t know the whole story. How could she figure this out? Who the hell is she even?

But more importantly, she’s going to tell him. She’s going to tell him, and he’s never going to look at me the same again. He’s going to hate me, and all that sweetness, that openness, everything I’m craving… He’ll withdraw.

The last man he ever had a fling with is going to crush his trust, and his last days are going to be miserable.

Maybe I can fix this. Maybe if I let him down gently, then go see her, tell her to call it off, explain my reasoning…

That’s what I’ll do. I’ll give August time to get home, then I’ll call him.

I’ll end it.

Over the phone.

I’ll just tell him, you and me, we could never work. We’re a mathematical impossibility.

But I’ll always adore you.

And it was nice to know you.

And he’ll never, never understand just how wonderful it was.