32. Good August
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
GOOD AUGUST
IS SURPRISINGLY OKAY WITH DESTROYING THE WORLD TO KEEP BAD AUGUST AROUND A BIT LONGER
“Shashi, you were right! It’s Augusts!” Amber’s eyes are enormous as she steps back, holding the door open for us. But she just about swallows the room with them when she clocks our guest. “They found another one!”
I stoop to kiss her cheek while the others shuffle in. “How’d you know it would be us?”
“Science,” Shashi mutters from across the room.
Shashi and Amber have the best apartment.
It’s like a Parisienne boudoir, all lamps and silks, in what is honestly a crappy basement room.
They met and started a long-distance thing when Amber came to a show in Cambridge with me and the band.
They hit it off that first night, and it’s just been a matter of logistics ever since.
On the books, Shashi’s ‘on sabbatical,’ but in actual fact, she’s having the time of her life following Non Jovi around, playing house with Amber, though she is hitting a little study on the side.
Today, she’s looking appallingly beautiful.
Evidently, we’ve gotten them out of bed, and she throws a green silk robe over her shoulders, half-heartedly covering a portion of her black cami and underwear.
Her eyes are thickly dark, like she didn’t bother to take off her makeup last night—or has been too busy to, an assumption she proves more likely with her next words.
“I’ve been working on your calculations, August.” She picks up an A4 piece of paper, one of many that’s covered in scrawls and calculations. “This, in my professional opinion, is bullshit.”
We’re off to a good start.
August steps forward, looking a little annoyed. “Which bit in particular strikes you as ‘bullshit?’”
“The lot of it. Most especially the playing dice with the universe part. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Throwing two hands up in the air, “I was depressed!”
She nods along sarcastically, hands on hips. “Mmm. Fat lot of good that does us now.”
“Shashi says we’re all going to die,” Amber confides softly in my ear. “Which feels a little bit dramatic. Or it did. Until the sky turned to death.”
“It’ll only get worse,” our new August pipes up.
“That sky’s caused by a shift in the photon resonance.
But photons are a light particle, so they react the fastest. Everything heavier will start to change soon too.
The temperature will go haywire; gravity’s going to stop working.
The atoms that hold you together are going to vibrate so hard against one another you’ll explode like a grape in the microwave. ”
Everyone falls silent. And fair enough too. Until Shashi finally breaks in with, “Well, that was graphic.”
“And who’s this?” asks Amber, eyeing Assassin August. “I mean… You know what I mean.”
Jon takes her arm, pulling her towards the bench by the wall that serves as a kitchen. “I’ll explain what’s going on.”
His tone unsettles me, but Shashi evidently has no need of an explanation regarding the latest August’s appearance.
“I’ll assume he’s another of you who’s popped over from a neighbouring universe.
And that explains why everything’s falling apart even faster than your calculations suggest it should, August.”
“Hey, yeah!” my August exclaims, narrowing his eyes at the newcomer. “That’s why! It’s all his fault for being here!”
“It’s not all his fault, is it?” Shashi’s not fucking around with a glare like that. She knows way more than even I do, I can just tell.
My August’s mouth drops open, and he makes a strangled sort of sound right at the back of his throat.
“No. No, this isn’t our fault. I mean, n-not entirely.
I mean…” His lips press hard, he swallows audibly, then links his little finger in mine.
I don’t think I like that he feels the need to do that.
It seems like a prelude to trouble, especially when he looks at me and says, “I did say how maybe we shouldn’t touch too much? ”
Some mixture of guilt and horror takes me. I try to pull my finger away from him, but he grasps my whole hand instead. “Maybe? You said you were wrong about that. When I asked you, and I did, several times, you said we could touch.”
“I thought we could. A bit.”
“That was more than a bit!”
“No, before that. Like when we held hands, I thought… nothing happened. So I figured it was fine.”
“Ah, your rigorous scientific framework again,” Assassin August mocks.
“Would you shut up?” August rounds on him before turning back to me. “Okay, but I also kind of figured your world was already fucked by that point.”
“So you just kept on? You threw caution to the wind, marched my world towards death?”
“It was inevitable. I didn’t think we could save it.
An-and I really liked you. And you seemed happy.
And I wanted you to be happy. And I wanted to hold your hand.
” When he lowers his voice, moves closer, and brings my hand to his heart, I hate to say it, but I’ve already turned straight to putty.
“And then you wore that Slayer shirt. And I really wanted to kiss you. And how was I supposed to resist that?”
His hand slides over my back, and my entire body reacts to him.
Resist? There is no resist. It’s a physical force as strong and natural as gravity.
I want to be angry. But apart from all his nice words and the insurmountable attraction I feel to him, I have to admit, I knew. I did. I knew what was going on, and that’s why I asked him so many times if we could touch. The time slip, the time loop, all the weirdness, last night in bed…
I begged him not to stop, when I knew what was happening wasn’t normal.
The tremor of guilt fails to water down the tingles the memory of fucking August shoots through me.
Damn, that sex was so hot.
I have never in my entire life experienced anything like that. Nothing close to that pleasure. It was supernatural. There’s no other word for it. It was beyond imagination. It was all-encompassing, complete and utter bliss.
Fuck, I need to try to feel more guilty.
But he kisses me, and that brings it back a thousandfold.
I worry I might actually burn the world just for another night with him.
“Could you please stop touching?” Shashi asks, voice taut, on the edge of tolerance.
“Right. Sorry.” August steps away. My body slightly tilts over, like he’s a magnet pulling me, so I plant my feet hard.
“Sorry.” But I still press my lips together, running my tongue along the inside seam just for a taste of him.
“When you two are together,” Shashi recommences, with an irritated lecturer’s tone, her Sri Lankan accent coming a little thicker in her sternness, “you’re creating a ‘friction point.’”
“I’ll say,” August mutters to me under his breath.
I think I’ve turned a brighter red than the sky we destroyed with amazing sex last night. I still don’t feel bad enough. What’s wrong with me? I should really wipe this filthy smile off my face.
“Shut up, please.” Shashi strides across the small room to their large dining table.
“What’s happening is, you’re energising all the particles around you whenever you’re together.
It radiates out from you, creating a wave of chaos from that epicentre.
It’s bad enough that you’re both in the same city, let alone kissing.
And I can pretty much guess what happened last night. ”
If I hadn’t had sex with almost every person in this room, I’d die at this point. But I have. So I ask brightly, “Do you have any solutions, then?”
“Stop fucking for one,” Assassin August suggests, his voice really unnecessarily judgmental.
“No!” I snap out, mostly because I don’t like the way he spoke. I mean, maybe we should stop fucking, but that’s none of his business. You know, besides his mission to prevent multiversal apocalypse.
“The world is literally ending,” Shashi reminds us, which yeah, I know.
Jon comes back with some tea, a cup of which he pushes at me. “Was it really that good?” He shoots Amber a ‘look’ and she drops her head to hide the smirk.
“I’m not answering that,” I reply. Yet I can’t help but try to assuage this guilt a half second later with, “Yes! Yes, okay, it was that good. And I’m sorry about the sky. No one told me that might be a consequence.” I slightly glare at August again.
“I genuinely did not know that would happen,” my August protests. “I mean, I knew it might affect something, but not specifically that, and not this badly.”
“Maybe if you studied it like a—oh, I don’t know—like a scientist?”
“Why is this August such an asshole?” my August cries.
“Just trying to save the multiverse,” he snipes back.
“It’s not like I’m trying to destroy it!”
“Well, that’s a shame, because you’d be really fucking good at that!”
“Jesus! Can you see him?” August turns his whole body in my direction, holding both hands out to point at me. “Are you fucking blind? Look at him!”
All eyes are on me, following my August’s out-thrust hands, and it’s an odd feeling being assessed as to whether you’re attractive enough to be held responsible for destroying a world via sex.
Amber’s the first with the conclusion. “You look exactly the same.”
A loud scoff breaks out of my August. “Look at him!” he insists. “He has abs!”
Their eyes drop, and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to pull my shirt up as proof.
Amber turns her head slowly to Jon for help, which I’m sure is a bad idea.
“He’s so hot,” Jon interjects with conviction. “All versions of him. If I were in his shoes, I’d do the exact same thing.”
My August looks like he’s about to punch him, I’m about to die of embarrassment, but the other August comes back with a dubious, “You’d fuck yourself?”
“It goes a bit deeper than that,” August snaps at him.
But Jon says, “I totally would. Can you imagine that? All the things you’d like to do that you could never admit to a regular partner? He’d just know. Imagine how depraved things could get…”