Chapter 49
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
GOOD AUGUST
TAKE ME HOME
By the time August has settled down next to me on the plush bed covers, I’m sincerely debating how hard it would be to stay here in the future with him.
Exhausted doesn’t even begin to describe the state I’m in.
Stress, death, interdimensional travel, a sincere lack of food, the amount of times my life has been threatened in the last few days…
but above all, so much sex. So much wonderful and grand sex.
I’m spent. I need a long sleep and a good cuddle…
He lifts his face from my shoulder to kiss my cheek. His lips send that same familiar and wonderful tingle through me.
Yeah, I’ll be good to go again soon.
My hand slides over his ass, I kiss him back, then my stomach drops through the entire forty-four stories of this building when I hear the door lock slide open.
Chill terror freezes my limbs as voices break into our peace. The wheels of suitcases, footsteps…
The pair of us dive naked off the bed, searching for August’s discarded robe. We barely have time to cover ourselves, and even then, only the parts that really count, before a shocked man and woman walk into the room, staring at us like… like they’ve just discovered fucking twins. Literally.
“Oh my god!” she wails.
“What the fuck is this?” he shouts.
“Wrong room?” I try.
She makes a squealing sound and whirls back into the other room, while her partner stands there looking at us as if he’s witnessed a horrible accident.
“Forty-four eleven?” she shouts.
“Yes,” I whimper. “Yes, that’s us. My room key is on the coffee table.”
“Oh my god!” she whines.
“Is he your… brother?” the man exclaims in horror.
I look to August for help. Maybe people know about interdimensional travel in this world. Maybe this isn’t that weird? Maybe I should just tell him?
“Cousin,” says August. His face is perfectly at ease, deadpan, except for a little sparkle in his eyes.
Laughter forms like a big noxious bubble in my chest, working its way up and up. I bite down on my lip hard.
“Disgusting!” the man announces. He gives us one final glare that could melt steel, then the pair of them drag their suitcases out, and the door closes with a soft hotel fwoomp.
August’s robe falls to the floor when I put extra effort into slapping his arm. “What did you tell them that for?”
“Come on. There was no getting out of that. At least now they have a story to tell.”
“We have to go,” I insist, clamping down the laughter. “This is terrible.”
But it’s not. It’s charming and hilarious, and I just hope we can sneak out of here without getting charged for the room and then arrested because we can’t pay.
We climb into our clothes in record time, but August stops me as I’m about to flee, grabbing my waistband and pulling me close to him. “Whatever happens now, thank you. Thanks for falling in love with me. Thanks for being my partner. Thank you for changing my life.”
I wrap my arms around him, trying to capture all the hours I wish I could spend here with him in one tight hug. “I could say all the same things to you. I just hope this worked.”
“Even if it didn’t, I won’t give up on us. We’ll try something else.”
I love him for saying that.
It could be the longest ride in any elevator ever, wondering if staff will be waiting for us at the bottom. How are we supposed to explain this? ‘Sorry, needed a place to fuck to stop the world ending.’ ‘Do you think I could pull a move like that in an alleyway?’
Damn, that was good, though. I’d always wanted to try that… August, so worn out with pleasure, so broken and desperate on my—
Ding!
Shit. Okay. Eyes on the ground. Just walk like it’s nothing. Like we’re a pair of totally normal and non-fucking cousins. Or something.
“That’s them!” a voice shouts across the lobby.
August grabs my hands and we bolt. We don’t look back for a second, spilling into the crowded street.
It’s incredible to be out here again. I have no idea how much time has passed since Assassin August reawakened everyone, but it’s just as busy as it was before.
People seem a little less like they’re just shopping, and more serious.
They know something big went down. A few look to be nursing minor injuries from the fall.
I can see some people in uniform talking to others.
But we couldn’t pause if we wanted to. August never slows or lets go of my hand, and we make straight for the raised walkway. It takes some serious acrobatics to get from there back up onto the freeway, but dangerous as it is, we eventually scale it and find ourselves high over the city.
It’s so different to the walk when we got here. August was so upset, keeping all of that inside. Now his arm stays around me. He’s stopped worrying about me and how I’ll cope with his loss. Now we’re together. Finally.
My heart stutters when we find our friends, half of them sitting on the ground, Shashi and August pacing. But when they catch sight of us, their faces light.
“The rift’s back!” Shashi cries. “Come quickly. We were so worried it would close before you got here.”
Jon scrambles up to throw his arms around me. “You fixed it! What did you do?”
I pat a hand over his back, flushing. “Um, I’ll explain lat—”
“Never,” August finishes for me. But when Jon throws his arms around him too, August hugs him back. It’s not a sight I ever thought I’d see.
Amber dusts herself off. “Should we try it? Where do you think it will go?”
“Hopefully back to the barn,” says Assassin August. “If it’s worked like it should, we can retrace our steps.”
“And really get home?” Her excitement is tinged with nervousness, accompanied by a side glance at Shashi.
“I hope so,” I tell her.
Christ, I hope I haven’t misjudged this. Messed it all up even more.
Assassin August passes a worried glance over my shoulder, and I know who he’s looking for.
“Are the other Augusts alright?”
“They’re all alright,” he says. “But with everyone awake again, someone will let them loose before long, if they haven’t already.
” He holds up his hand, still clutching the Particle Stasis Displacement Pulser.
“We were able to sneak away through the crowd, but I’m worried they’ll detect the rift and find us. ”
“It’s okay. If this worked like I hope it did, pretty soon that fifty million credits should be wiped. Along with everything else that’s on August’s inter-universal perp sheet. Let’s go.”
August grabs my hand. “Together, okay?”
I drop a kiss on his cheek. “Yeah. From now on.”
Before another disaster can catch up with us, we walk into the shimmering rift.
For the first time, I’m not on the run, desperately tumbling through, trying to escape.
I’m walking towards something hopeful. A tingling warmth ensconces me, a buzzing vibration through August’s hand, up my arm, all through me, but around us too. He never lets go.
The crackle of crisp hay sounds beneath my foot as the hayloft swims into view, gloriously lit by a blaze of afternoon sunshine. The smell hits me first, fresh and rural and so real. The smell of England. The smell of springtime. Of life.
“Slayer…” He grips my hand a little tighter, looking at me with purest love. “You did it. You actually did it!”
It’s real, all of it—real and tactile, solid and beautiful. The most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.
Until I see his smile.
This is what it feels like to have someone you love feel proud of you. To view you with complete and unadulterated adoration. It’s flooring, and the only thing that can ground me is his kiss.
When the others stumble through, when he turns to help them, I collapse down onto a hay bale. One of the hay bales we moved with our own hands. How long ago? Has it been seconds since we left? Hours? Years?
Textures never looked so gorgeous before—the grain of the wood, the precision and delicacy of a spider’s web, the rusting metal bolts in the ceiling.
All of it, every piece, stardust older than human comprehension, formed into miracle after miracle after miracle.
Forces of nature so complex, so beautiful.
But none so complex or compelling as our love.
“Do you need to rest?” August’s hand on my cheek, his words soft and close over the voices of the group, the living celebration of what we’ve done.
“No. I want to get home. I want to get started on our new life. Right away.”
He pulls me to my feet. “We’ve already started. Nothing’s going to stop us now.”
We retrace our path, out of the barn, across the paddock, along the riverbank to what we hope is the place we plunged into the water.
Our walk back is, of course, far slower than when we were being chased by that lunatic future August. And I realise what a pleasure this is, to experience something with my August, with my friends, that no one else from my time can ever touch.
The world as it was so long ago, but just as precious as ours is.
It’s night when we find our way to Primrose Hill. We had to ask directions from a local, and that didn’t go well. Then it’s all we can do to stand around and hope the time slip ends.
Under cover of night, we climb to the top.
It feels morbid to get onto the still-erected scaffold, but it feels worse to sit beneath it, so we settle a little way down the hill, and lie on the grass.
The barn might have been a nicer resting spot, certainly a warmer one, but when August drapes his arms around me to keep me warm, I’m more than okay with this.
The stars are brilliant, brighter than I’ll ever see them again in the centre of London. Bright and in their place, for now and forever, because I fell in love. With myself.
We lie there for hours, half dozing, until Jon and Assassin August stop fiddling with each other’s fingers long enough to notice, “Buildings! Buildings all the way!”
I almost slip down the hill with August’s enthusiasm to get me on my feet. “The pub! We need to get to the pub!”
There’s some commotion when we burst through the doors there, but none of us stop long enough to pay attention to it. We run through to the back room, slam the door behind us, and dive through the waiting portal.
It’s with a mixture of extreme trepidation, then fierce relief, that we arrive back in our own time, if not our own reality.
If any time passed here, it’s impossible to tell.
It’s already dark outside, and as soon as I remember our pockets are stuffed full of the money we made breaking into the cafe, we’re on the move again, buying tickets at the station to get to Cambridge University, spending the rest on as much food as we can carry to eat on the way.
The computer lab at Cambridge is empty but open, and the rift’s there too, waiting for us.
Then, just on the other side, on a nondescript table, we find Assassin August’s particle accelerator.
He closes the rift, pockets the accelerator, then we make for Jon’s van, and he drives us straight back to London.
Everything’s in place, just as it should be.
Every drop of water, sparkle of sunshine, winter breeze, and glint of leaves is fresh and new and precious.
The food we scoff on the way is pure junk, yet it feels deeply nourishing.
As does the music Jon blasts on the stereo, astounding Assassin August all over again.
The company of these friends is precious to me, now more than ever.
None of us are inclined to go far from one another, least of all my August, who’s never out of reach.
But the group needs to part. Sleep’s been a distant memory for most of the past week.
And a bed that I can actually sleep in? It’s a sensation I’ve almost forgotten.
We say goodnight to Shashi and Amber first, then Jon automatically makes for mine.
It’s a lot quieter without Shashi and Amber. There’s that feeling of a whole suddenly missing a piece. Both Jon and Assassin August are oddly quiet, the two of them in the front.
My frazzled brain finally pumps out the logical piece of the next puzzle to be solved: logistics. “So, we’ve got three Augusts now,” I commence.
Assassin August looks back at me a little nervously. “Yeah. I mean, I’ve got my accelerator. So I can go. Somewhere…”
“You can’t go yet,” Jon blurts out, watching Assassin August more than he’s watching the road, which is making me kind of anxious. “We just got back.”
“I… um…” Assassin August stares out his window into the bleak dark of a British winter. “I hadn’t thought it through. I kind of expected us to die.”
So I tell him, “August, you’re clearly coming home with us.”
My own August bumps my knee with his. I guess this other August did try to kill him. But since then, he’s been really nice. He also tried to save both of us. And if we’ve learned anything, it’s that no Augusts are perfect.
“That’s really kind.” Assassin August glances at Jon when he says it, catching his eye easily, since Jon seems barely able to keep his eyes off August.
“Won’t that be bad?” says Jon. “All you Augusts in there together? Aren’t you supposed to be not doing that?”
My August dips his head to rest it on my shoulder. “Have you got a better idea, Jon?” He glances up at me with a quiet smile.
“Would it maybe help if—and you know, this is just an idea that just came to me, just now… but do you think it would help if… Because I’ve got space…” Glancing at Assassin August again. “Only if you wanted to.”
“Oh.” Assassin August sits up like a puppy who’s just heard a tin being opened. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“It’s not imposing. I have plenty of room.”
“I mean, only if you’re really sure.”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Because you don’t have to. I could sleep in the van.”
“Oh. Did you want to sleep in the van?”
“I don’t mean that I want to—I—it’s only if…”
August chuckles and drops a kiss on my cheek.
They’re adorable.
Not as adorable as us, but it’s sweet to watch.
We let them prattle on for the rest of the trip, my eyes getting heavier with every kilometre, until eventually we’re able to say our goodnights with an agreement they’ll come see us tomorrow.
Finally alone together, August and I stumble into my small but increasingly adored little flat, turn on the heater, crawl into bed, and sleep for a solid twelve hours.