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 botherto 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’sfalling 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 notallhis 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’tourfault. 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 howmaybewe 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 tosay 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?”
