“What? Huh?” His eyes fly up to meet mine. Pink-cheeked, his mouth drops open. “Hmm?”
“The Big Bang, August. How much do you know?”
“I know, um…” He raises a hand to his temple, looking flustered.
Damn, I’d like to make him more flustered.
“Well, okay, I know…”
“Take your time. This isn’t a test. I just want to know where we stand so I can explain it properly.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Some touch of determination takes him, and he seems to physically shake off his nervousness. He pulls his hoodie over his head and throws it down on the mattress, coming to stand dead in the centre of the room facing the boards.
Fuck me, what the actual hell is he wearing?
It’s a tight and tiny dark-grey midriff tank top with the logo of the band Slayer on it. Some touchably soft, thin material, and his body… Those biceps. His pecs. They’reenormous. It’s like throwing a handkerchief over Saharan sand dunes. He’s bulging out everywhere. And then his abs… holy fuck, yes, the man has abs! He has perfect, deeply cut, undulating, desperately lickable abs, and that gorgeously pathetic excuse for a shirt is doing nothing to cover them.
“So, obviously, the Big Bang is where our universe came from. No one knows what caused it, but there are tonnes of theories. Basically, it blasted into existence very suddenly, and brought with it the few gases that became the building blocks of life. Um… hydrogen, beryllium. I don’t know… Lithium?”
His eyes are on mine, like I’m supposed to say something, but fuck, look at him. He’s like a statue of human perfection. “Slayer?”
“What?” He looks down, then his face cracks into a smile. “Oh. Yeah. I forgot I was wearing that.”
“You like Slayer?”
“Not that much. But I like the shirt.”
“I like the shirt,” I whisper, trying to keep all traces of drool out of it.
Christ, he’s biting his lip. I’m going to die.
“Am I wrong? Not Lithium?”
“Lithium?”
Abs. Abs. Abs. Abs. Abs.
“Oh! Lithium!”Oh, shit. He’s so clever. God, I want him.“Yeah, no, hydrogen, lithium, beryllium, and trace helium.”
“Yes, helium.” He clicks his fingers, and he has the sweetest, most satisfied smile. He’s really studied this in his own time. “So that all blasted out of nowhere, as far as anyone knows. The gases swirled about, formed stars, and those stars crushed the particles together, creating all the elements we know, then shot them out as stardust. Oxygen, neon, uranium, the carbon we’re made from—all of it stardust. And dark energy expanded the universe, dark matter filled up the space, and… that’s about as much as I know. Universe expanding. Stars bursting into life. Galaxies swirling. Space, violent and beautiful, creating new worlds every second.”
He’s dazzling. He’s alive with that same excitement I caught in his eyes last night when we went through the time slip. He’s lost in the magic of space, and I adore this about him.
I miss how I used to feel. Like he does. When it was this magical fantasy, this miracle of nature. “You’re right. About all of it. That’s your universe, that’s how it came to be.”
His nod is softly proud. “Then what about your universe? Is it the same?”
“As far as I know, yeah. We had our own Big Bang, probably the same one. Look at me, and look at you, and you can see we’ve run on parallel timelines, two universes expanding side by side. So close. So similar. All of it in balance. That cosmic dance—planets, moons, solar systems—everything in equilibrium in both our existences.”
He lowers his head slowly, holding my gaze, expectant for the other shoe to drop. “Until?”
And here it comes. How to explain what I’ve done without implicating myself?
“Until someone figured out that maybe all universes don’t run on the same timetable. Until someone thought, okay, there are these theoretical universes all side by side, overlapping, almost the same, but for a slightly different arrangement of particles that got spat out at the same time. But then, what if there are others that maybe evolved faster? What if some of them evolved more slowly? What if whatever caused that Big Bang didn’t happen everywhere simultaneously all at once? Our universe’s expansion is slowing, isn’t it?”
He gives a fast nod, his shyness from earlier having given way to interest. “Yeah, I read that. That’s why some people believed in a Big Crunch, that the universe would expand as far as it could, but then snap back like a rubber band and crunch everything back down, maybe enabling a new Big Bang cycle.”
My smile reaches deep within. “You’re so smart. It’s such a pleasure to do this with you.”
