The Drought Story
The Drought Story
PGish
Remus/Sirius
3182 words
For Cate (all praise her).
Edited some since the first time.
1.
Remus's owl died at the end of June, inaugurating what Sirius dubbed the Summer of Heatstroke.
A letter came; all signs pointed to Remus and his chronic loneliness. Although there was no name and nothing to identify a rural origin, it was painfully obvious that Remus was the only one for whom a cryptic letter, one word in length, would hold any appeal. Sirius responded in kind, with the same word economy. ("Hi.")
Because he thought himself somewhat more artistic than Remus-the main reason for this being that Sirius drank Darjeeling-he felt it was his obligation to write the letter on the unfolded planes of failed origami, in whirligig handwriting, in charmed orange ink. He left a smattering of marmalade fingerprints he hoped Remus would appreciate. (He did.) When Remus had his answer Sirius settled back into the comatose pace of the summer holidays with James, who only ever wrote letters to his aunts, thanking them for gifts he hated.
Sometime before Sirius's three a.m. bedtime an owl clattered against the window, which had begun to cloud ominously with condensation. The letter bid him a simple "Night" and rustled in June's last breeze, like one of Remus's frequent sighs.
"Is he somebody's mother," James said groggily, "always checking up, goodnight this, goodnight that? Padfoot, do something about him."
Sirius wrote.
From there the letters were exchanged five/six/two-point-three/eight times a day, written on paper bags and blank cards; they were conceived of on the 80th stumbling lap round James's backyard, glancing dubiously at the hydrangea, during two-minute showers, and as they conducted experiments on moths that festooned the light fixtures. Three letters made it pattern and so every letter following was one word in length, and it was lucky they were intuitive because you couldn’t establish a one-word rule without saying a lot.
Sirius wrote "morning" to Remus's "night" and they played opposites before spiraling down tangential alleys, feeling like etymologists (black - white - blanc - blank - bored). At one point Sirius lost the rapidly fraying thread of conversation and compensated by relaying whatever fragile teenage mood he was experiencing at the moment. Late morning gave way to dreaming and he was at his most cynical at 4:30 in the afternoon. He began to run out of words and then, after plundering the dictionary, convinced himself that there were no adequate words. There was nothing to describe the ephemera of June, the constant potpourri of flowers wilting in the back garden, the way words were sweating ink off the pages, how the windows were moist, how the sunlight stained yellow, and how tedious it was to wake up in the middle of the night at the clamor of the neighbors, who were trying to stuff a mattress out the window so they could sleep in their backyard.
When he couldn't think of anything Sirius tore a page out of one of his frightening Russian novels and blacked out every word except for "stifled," which he'd picked in a complicated procedure that involved closing his eyes and sticking the page with a pin.
The response came the next morning on a colored sheet of paper, wistful blue. It read "September." Even Remus's handwriting was melancholic. Sirius used it to mark a chapter but when he opened the book that night he could only stare at the letter, reciting September like a one-word poem, quietly. A tinge of sadness crept into his chest the same shade as the stationary, without him ever knowing why.
Why?, indeed, Sirius wrote, and sent the owl on its way. (There was something terribly dramatic about the whole thing, he felt, in the dark retracing of the word and the way he'd all but thrust the bird out the window. But it was Tuesday, after all, and one had to keep busy.)
An answer arrived late Wednesday morning in the beak of a timid brown fluff-thing impersonating an owl. Its predecessor was dead, according to Remus’s letter, 67 words over the established limit. He was sorry. He thought Sirius should know. He said something about record temperatures and four trips a day and the lifespan of spotted owls and how the conversation had been a waste of resources; anyway it was bound to happen and don’t blame yourself. Every sentence was straightfoward, unsurprised at mortality. Remus also wrote
PS. Because.
2.
He led them to a suspicious patch in the yard, bare amongst brittle green-yellow grass. There was no telltale bloody shovel but Sirius could well imagine. "Is that it?" he said. "That's it," Remus replied, and they sat down on either side of the grave. "I think it died of everything."
Sirius bowed his head, the icon of sorrow, but he was really looking for a stick. When he found one he leaned forward and held it like a sumi-e brush, bound for willowy ink mountainscapes. Sirius's tongue poked out between his lips and he expected to see Remus watching him curiously but he wasn't. Sirius wrote: OWL YOU WERE TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR THIS WORLD, in crisscrossing dirt burrows. An epitaph as long as the rain held off, which, according to an unbroken amber-glass sky, might be forever. Sirius touched the ground and came away with a finger coated in dust. There again he looked at Remus, who was smiling dreamily at the house.
"I should tell you," he said. "There's nothing here. Nothing happens, and you're better off back with James. You didn't have to come."
Sirius shrugged. He preferred to ignore Remus's bouts of fatalism.
They stayed a moment longer, observing all the proper traditions, and then stood up simultaneously. The lilacs were a head taller than both of them and Sirius told Remus, several times, how this made him feel. Remus didn't know what to say. Both his parents took to gardening; it was the way of the world.
He took Sirius back and forth round the house in aimless revolutions, like at James's. He pointed out a garden that didn't start or end, and clusters of vegetables and vegetable imposters in pots here and there. Sad little yellow bulbs, green in the their centers, who wanted to be tomatoes when they grew up. (Sirius nodded in sympathy.) His head whirled at the kaleidoscope of pastels. When he bent down for a closer look, he saw that many of the blooms and leaves were dappled with little sun-spots, like burns, Remus said. Water droplets hit a plant and on sunny days left their mark with sickly yellow dots.
It was barely noon but the heat clothed them and made Sirius scratch his wrists constantly; they were prickling with the flight of a thousand phantom insects. Remus clawed at something on his forehead. His nose was raw pink, Sirius noted carefully, as he did where people's noses were concerned. He reached out to tap the sunburn but Remus ducked from his touch, laughing breathless in the humidity. His cheeks were going pink as well and dusted with pinprick freckles, everywhere.
"I had you for a hermit," Sirius said.
"Oh?"
"Yes, locked in a dungeon, advancing shady conversations one word at a time. But you're bloody Mother Nature's Son, aren't you? You bring your library out here, and traipse through the daisies, and, and, do handstands. Skip. Tame bees. And barefoot too. I'll bet that rosebush is yours."
"You talk too much," Remus said.
"I am merely commenting on your charming ways."
Remus smirked.
The weather was worse inside but Sirius followed him into halls of dark, splintered wood, all holding heat like a blanket. When he blinked he saw afterimages from the bright country (apples on a tree) and squinted his eyes (blue dragonflies) to no avail (and all the rolling green sea-hills); everything was unchanged, cavelike.
At the end of a hall was Remus's bedroom, the cracks in the door outlined by yellow glow. They drifted toward it in near-hypnotic fatigue and when the door cracked open, Sirius waved away the cozy cluttered surfaces and pictures on the walls; he sank straight into bed. He brushed the hair out of his eyes, leaving damp swipes across his forehead. (To think of it, a time when you sweated just for being.) Through thick cotton walls of sound he heard Remus's voice fuzzily saying this was his bed. But soon there was a dull weight at his left, and he turned to face it even though it breathed warm breeze in his ear. Each exhale revived him, for what it was worth. There was a clock somewhere in the room and Sirius counted 121 tocks before he said, "Are you asleep?"
Remus made a small noise but didn't speak. It was quiet as leaf silhouettes shown through the window and danced across Remus's face. Dust wandered in small galaxies and the fine hairs on their bare arms lit up in the sunlight. Sirius's hand crept forward, smoothing over Remus's clothed hipbone like a token for luck. He counted Remus's breaths as response: they were deep and easy, drugged in the heat and lilac air. He splayed his fingers in the small spaces between Remus's ribs just to keep him steady.
3.
James-
Two chickens died this morning and lo, everything is descended into darkness for the tender bird souls. (Speaking of tender, excellent chicken dinner forthcoming, I expect.) There are 400 cats as well, two of which seem to be named Lola. I counted 84 sheep whilst traveling here in the steel death machine - pardon, car - and need I remind you it is not a long ride, we were here by 11. Upon this time I was approached by an ornery rooster. Later spotted strange hulk across a field, which my kind hostess identified as a "cow." As you can imagine I am fascinated. In addition to all these riveting creatures the Lupins also keep with them a male boy, 16 or 17 years of age I'd say, well behaved, quiet. Strange grey coloring though currently exhibiting brilliant pigment. They've trained him to talk but he is shy about his talent.
I shall forgo a statement on the weather.
-S
Later that morning they found another in the grass, its small wings camouflage in the bed of leaves shed the night before, when there were lightning flashes in the sky but no rain, and wind they weren't awake to feel. (When Sirius woke up, the aftermath of the storm was in the bedroom: it was Remus’s arm flung over his, in between them on the bed they hadn’t meant to drift off in, on the morning with the weather from another continent.) "The Lupin Memorial Home," Sirius said. "That's four birds. Isn't there a proverb about dead birds?" At Sirius's comments on the avian tragedies, Remus shrugged as if to say That's the story of my life. They buried the bird next to the owl and in the afternoon sat on the edge of the bathtub, where it was cool.
4.
Five years old, he said, with the quiet poise of a musician launching into his first composition. He was five years old in London, Dad with a shop and Mum loved the city. There was a narrow brown hall one person could squeeze through and little Moroccan tiles you slipped on all year round, in the drizzle, and he could still see them light up orange from the street when the door opened at night. "Just like that," his mother said, and she'd pointed to a streetlamp. "It will be that round, in two weeks."
In two weeks Dad sold the shop and the flurry of the house was punctuated by dropped boxes and the constant toll of the telephone. "No one ever answered it," Remus said. His voice was stale in the heat. He named six pairs of aunts and uncles, eleven cousins, the patrons - friends - neighbors - well-wishers and the man on the street, who might have missed them, if they'd noticed the Lupins in the first place. "We let it ring, and when we left no one knew where we were.
"The Ministry has a compound, if you've nowhere else to go. But my parents didn't like it." He said this as though it were a summer home with the wrong color brick, too near or too far and not enough ocean. Sirius did not hazard a word; conversation was picking up broken glass. You would've liked each piece polished by surf, and to hold a little jewel marvel in your hand afterward, but this was too easy.
Like prospectors his parents never strayed far, in case someone found the glimmer of an answer.
"We chose this house because it had a shed," Remus explained. Then he tilted his head and looked coolly satisfied. "Was that what you wanted? Something like that?”
"I suppose like that," Sirius said. "Now tell me another thing."
Remus bit the inside of his cheek. (This habit occurred no less than five times a day; Sirius set his clock by the little hollow that appeared in Remus's cheek when he was worried, when he was sad, when he had half a roll of parchment due, when it was four-thirty, when he was full of mirth and might contaminate others. It was pointless telling him to stop.) "You feel sorry for me."
"No," he said slowly, unintended discipline in his voice. "I don't, because you belong here now. And everything belongs to you. You're all right, now."
5.
James won, in the end, with a curt letter that read Wankers and nothing else.
"I wasn't aware it was a game," Remus said. "I poured my soul into those letters, Black."
Sirius played a private game of his own, then, lobbing a mad question back and forth in his mind; he nearly reached into his trouser pocket a dozen times to unearth the September letter to make Remus discuss Feelings. He closed his eyes and inhaled July. Sense-deprived compartments of his brain feasted on oxygen, and stayed his hand, and Sirius concentrated on stillness. The window was open - as it had been for days - and he smelled stubborn rain that wouldn't arrive until late August, before they came together again in autumn with all its blue sky, apple-crisp air and seventh year terrors, the latter of which was still a foreign menace on Remus's bedroom floor.
It was morning, technically: the clock read two and six. The Tizer they were drinking was stale and left his mouth waxy, and a hundred carpet fibers clung to his perfectly shirtless back. Ordinarily this was not Sirius's favorite pastime but they were celebrating, and they did not know why they were celebrating, but they had no reason not to and this was as good a reason as any. Remus was eating a festive bowl of ice in lieu of swimming in the pond, which they'd discovered had dried up.
"When are you going home?" Remus said, and then apologized four times for any misconceptions.
"I meant to James's," he said.
"I know," said Sirius.
"I'm not counting down the days or anything," he said.
"I know," Sirius said. "And I don't know. I like it there. I like it here."
"Hm," Remus said. He smiled impishly, his lower lip perfect cherry-colored from the ice chips he sucked on. His face shone a little in the balmy heat, and with the thrill of acceptance. Sirius smiled with him.
Later, they lay facing opposite walls with their heads nearly even. Some soft thing brushed Sirius's temple, but it was only a lock of Remus's hair. "Funny," Remus said, "that I should call it home. Do you do that too?"
Sirius frowned. "No. Maybe. I suppose." He glanced at Remus, who was watching him intently for the first time in days, seeing him and seeing himself and listening. He looked perpetually apologetic, embarrassingly tender. "James is family," Sirius mumbled, finally. "That's all. I don't know about anything else."
"It's okay," Remus said, and the clock counted the seconds of silence after that, the sweaty sheen of its face staring at them and waiting. "It's late," he said quietly. "It's still so warm." He stared straight at the ceiling and then sat up slowly, propelled from his shoulders by some unseen force. He padded round the room and Sirius listened to the night sounds for a while, and the little clink of the melting ice swirling in the glass bowl. Everything dripped by extraordinarily slow with the heat; you flexed your hand and found your joints fluid but sluggish, your blood sun-heated; you felt lazy and serpentine and sated every moment of the day.
Something cool-hot shocked him awake, and there was a tiny huff of laughter somewhere behind him. The ice cube slid down Sirius's cheek, freezing as it went. "Cold?" Remus said, heavy-lidded. He leaned forward so they were eye-to-eye, upside down.
"Arctic," said Sirius.
Remus scooped the cube up into nimble fingers and smoothed it over Sirius's forehead again, melting it in tiny circles that dripped into his eyes, down the side of his nose and caught in the bow of his lips, parting them. Sirius did not speak to stop him or to tease, though both occurred to him. He could feel Remus hesitate, momentarily, as he brushed his knuckles across Sirius's brow, leaving an aura of blue and frost even where he wasn't touching Sirius. Then Remus dipped back into the bowl again and drew runes and knots on Sirius's forehead, every first touch so cool it burned, and numbed, broke internal fevers and started new ones. The moment was deathly quiet. Sirius stared out the window and saw the top of Remus's head reflecting, all halos in his hair, bouncing red and gold sparks from the desk-lamp, but perhaps this was a trick of the light.
Something soft sealed on his forehead, across a delicately pulsing vein. Remus kissed him, and no one breathed. Then Remus sat up and brushed it all away with the glistening pink heel of his hand, and only smiled when Sirius stared back at him in wonder.
6.
(Home home home, he thought, with a jolt uncharacteristic of summer, home is where you are. It would come out wrong if he said it, so he started looking for another way while Remus was sleeping. Sirius crept through his room like a thief, touching ornaments and objects and every thing that Remus loved. He memorized each inch of the walls, the exact horrid plaid, and the square of window in which the moon was nestled. He felt every fiber of the scratching burgundy carpet, every speckled grain on the old desk and every hair on the head of the boy fast asleep in his bed, eyes screwed up in all the strange corridors of his subconscious. It took Sirius an hour to find a spare bit of paper and when he did he wrote one word, and tucked the corners of the paper together, and hid it someplace where Remus would find it, when he needed to.)
PGish
Remus/Sirius
3182 words
For Cate (all praise her).
Edited some since the first time.
1.
Remus's owl died at the end of June, inaugurating what Sirius dubbed the Summer of Heatstroke.
A letter came; all signs pointed to Remus and his chronic loneliness. Although there was no name and nothing to identify a rural origin, it was painfully obvious that Remus was the only one for whom a cryptic letter, one word in length, would hold any appeal. Sirius responded in kind, with the same word economy. ("Hi.")
Because he thought himself somewhat more artistic than Remus-the main reason for this being that Sirius drank Darjeeling-he felt it was his obligation to write the letter on the unfolded planes of failed origami, in whirligig handwriting, in charmed orange ink. He left a smattering of marmalade fingerprints he hoped Remus would appreciate. (He did.) When Remus had his answer Sirius settled back into the comatose pace of the summer holidays with James, who only ever wrote letters to his aunts, thanking them for gifts he hated.
Sometime before Sirius's three a.m. bedtime an owl clattered against the window, which had begun to cloud ominously with condensation. The letter bid him a simple "Night" and rustled in June's last breeze, like one of Remus's frequent sighs.
"Is he somebody's mother," James said groggily, "always checking up, goodnight this, goodnight that? Padfoot, do something about him."
Sirius wrote.
From there the letters were exchanged five/six/two-point-three/eight times a day, written on paper bags and blank cards; they were conceived of on the 80th stumbling lap round James's backyard, glancing dubiously at the hydrangea, during two-minute showers, and as they conducted experiments on moths that festooned the light fixtures. Three letters made it pattern and so every letter following was one word in length, and it was lucky they were intuitive because you couldn’t establish a one-word rule without saying a lot.
Sirius wrote "morning" to Remus's "night" and they played opposites before spiraling down tangential alleys, feeling like etymologists (black - white - blanc - blank - bored). At one point Sirius lost the rapidly fraying thread of conversation and compensated by relaying whatever fragile teenage mood he was experiencing at the moment. Late morning gave way to dreaming and he was at his most cynical at 4:30 in the afternoon. He began to run out of words and then, after plundering the dictionary, convinced himself that there were no adequate words. There was nothing to describe the ephemera of June, the constant potpourri of flowers wilting in the back garden, the way words were sweating ink off the pages, how the windows were moist, how the sunlight stained yellow, and how tedious it was to wake up in the middle of the night at the clamor of the neighbors, who were trying to stuff a mattress out the window so they could sleep in their backyard.
When he couldn't think of anything Sirius tore a page out of one of his frightening Russian novels and blacked out every word except for "stifled," which he'd picked in a complicated procedure that involved closing his eyes and sticking the page with a pin.
The response came the next morning on a colored sheet of paper, wistful blue. It read "September." Even Remus's handwriting was melancholic. Sirius used it to mark a chapter but when he opened the book that night he could only stare at the letter, reciting September like a one-word poem, quietly. A tinge of sadness crept into his chest the same shade as the stationary, without him ever knowing why.
Why?, indeed, Sirius wrote, and sent the owl on its way. (There was something terribly dramatic about the whole thing, he felt, in the dark retracing of the word and the way he'd all but thrust the bird out the window. But it was Tuesday, after all, and one had to keep busy.)
An answer arrived late Wednesday morning in the beak of a timid brown fluff-thing impersonating an owl. Its predecessor was dead, according to Remus’s letter, 67 words over the established limit. He was sorry. He thought Sirius should know. He said something about record temperatures and four trips a day and the lifespan of spotted owls and how the conversation had been a waste of resources; anyway it was bound to happen and don’t blame yourself. Every sentence was straightfoward, unsurprised at mortality. Remus also wrote
PS. Because.
2.
He led them to a suspicious patch in the yard, bare amongst brittle green-yellow grass. There was no telltale bloody shovel but Sirius could well imagine. "Is that it?" he said. "That's it," Remus replied, and they sat down on either side of the grave. "I think it died of everything."
Sirius bowed his head, the icon of sorrow, but he was really looking for a stick. When he found one he leaned forward and held it like a sumi-e brush, bound for willowy ink mountainscapes. Sirius's tongue poked out between his lips and he expected to see Remus watching him curiously but he wasn't. Sirius wrote: OWL YOU WERE TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR THIS WORLD, in crisscrossing dirt burrows. An epitaph as long as the rain held off, which, according to an unbroken amber-glass sky, might be forever. Sirius touched the ground and came away with a finger coated in dust. There again he looked at Remus, who was smiling dreamily at the house.
"I should tell you," he said. "There's nothing here. Nothing happens, and you're better off back with James. You didn't have to come."
Sirius shrugged. He preferred to ignore Remus's bouts of fatalism.
They stayed a moment longer, observing all the proper traditions, and then stood up simultaneously. The lilacs were a head taller than both of them and Sirius told Remus, several times, how this made him feel. Remus didn't know what to say. Both his parents took to gardening; it was the way of the world.
He took Sirius back and forth round the house in aimless revolutions, like at James's. He pointed out a garden that didn't start or end, and clusters of vegetables and vegetable imposters in pots here and there. Sad little yellow bulbs, green in the their centers, who wanted to be tomatoes when they grew up. (Sirius nodded in sympathy.) His head whirled at the kaleidoscope of pastels. When he bent down for a closer look, he saw that many of the blooms and leaves were dappled with little sun-spots, like burns, Remus said. Water droplets hit a plant and on sunny days left their mark with sickly yellow dots.
It was barely noon but the heat clothed them and made Sirius scratch his wrists constantly; they were prickling with the flight of a thousand phantom insects. Remus clawed at something on his forehead. His nose was raw pink, Sirius noted carefully, as he did where people's noses were concerned. He reached out to tap the sunburn but Remus ducked from his touch, laughing breathless in the humidity. His cheeks were going pink as well and dusted with pinprick freckles, everywhere.
"I had you for a hermit," Sirius said.
"Oh?"
"Yes, locked in a dungeon, advancing shady conversations one word at a time. But you're bloody Mother Nature's Son, aren't you? You bring your library out here, and traipse through the daisies, and, and, do handstands. Skip. Tame bees. And barefoot too. I'll bet that rosebush is yours."
"You talk too much," Remus said.
"I am merely commenting on your charming ways."
Remus smirked.
The weather was worse inside but Sirius followed him into halls of dark, splintered wood, all holding heat like a blanket. When he blinked he saw afterimages from the bright country (apples on a tree) and squinted his eyes (blue dragonflies) to no avail (and all the rolling green sea-hills); everything was unchanged, cavelike.
At the end of a hall was Remus's bedroom, the cracks in the door outlined by yellow glow. They drifted toward it in near-hypnotic fatigue and when the door cracked open, Sirius waved away the cozy cluttered surfaces and pictures on the walls; he sank straight into bed. He brushed the hair out of his eyes, leaving damp swipes across his forehead. (To think of it, a time when you sweated just for being.) Through thick cotton walls of sound he heard Remus's voice fuzzily saying this was his bed. But soon there was a dull weight at his left, and he turned to face it even though it breathed warm breeze in his ear. Each exhale revived him, for what it was worth. There was a clock somewhere in the room and Sirius counted 121 tocks before he said, "Are you asleep?"
Remus made a small noise but didn't speak. It was quiet as leaf silhouettes shown through the window and danced across Remus's face. Dust wandered in small galaxies and the fine hairs on their bare arms lit up in the sunlight. Sirius's hand crept forward, smoothing over Remus's clothed hipbone like a token for luck. He counted Remus's breaths as response: they were deep and easy, drugged in the heat and lilac air. He splayed his fingers in the small spaces between Remus's ribs just to keep him steady.
3.
James-
Two chickens died this morning and lo, everything is descended into darkness for the tender bird souls. (Speaking of tender, excellent chicken dinner forthcoming, I expect.) There are 400 cats as well, two of which seem to be named Lola. I counted 84 sheep whilst traveling here in the steel death machine - pardon, car - and need I remind you it is not a long ride, we were here by 11. Upon this time I was approached by an ornery rooster. Later spotted strange hulk across a field, which my kind hostess identified as a "cow." As you can imagine I am fascinated. In addition to all these riveting creatures the Lupins also keep with them a male boy, 16 or 17 years of age I'd say, well behaved, quiet. Strange grey coloring though currently exhibiting brilliant pigment. They've trained him to talk but he is shy about his talent.
I shall forgo a statement on the weather.
-S
Later that morning they found another in the grass, its small wings camouflage in the bed of leaves shed the night before, when there were lightning flashes in the sky but no rain, and wind they weren't awake to feel. (When Sirius woke up, the aftermath of the storm was in the bedroom: it was Remus’s arm flung over his, in between them on the bed they hadn’t meant to drift off in, on the morning with the weather from another continent.) "The Lupin Memorial Home," Sirius said. "That's four birds. Isn't there a proverb about dead birds?" At Sirius's comments on the avian tragedies, Remus shrugged as if to say That's the story of my life. They buried the bird next to the owl and in the afternoon sat on the edge of the bathtub, where it was cool.
4.
Five years old, he said, with the quiet poise of a musician launching into his first composition. He was five years old in London, Dad with a shop and Mum loved the city. There was a narrow brown hall one person could squeeze through and little Moroccan tiles you slipped on all year round, in the drizzle, and he could still see them light up orange from the street when the door opened at night. "Just like that," his mother said, and she'd pointed to a streetlamp. "It will be that round, in two weeks."
In two weeks Dad sold the shop and the flurry of the house was punctuated by dropped boxes and the constant toll of the telephone. "No one ever answered it," Remus said. His voice was stale in the heat. He named six pairs of aunts and uncles, eleven cousins, the patrons - friends - neighbors - well-wishers and the man on the street, who might have missed them, if they'd noticed the Lupins in the first place. "We let it ring, and when we left no one knew where we were.
"The Ministry has a compound, if you've nowhere else to go. But my parents didn't like it." He said this as though it were a summer home with the wrong color brick, too near or too far and not enough ocean. Sirius did not hazard a word; conversation was picking up broken glass. You would've liked each piece polished by surf, and to hold a little jewel marvel in your hand afterward, but this was too easy.
Like prospectors his parents never strayed far, in case someone found the glimmer of an answer.
"We chose this house because it had a shed," Remus explained. Then he tilted his head and looked coolly satisfied. "Was that what you wanted? Something like that?”
"I suppose like that," Sirius said. "Now tell me another thing."
Remus bit the inside of his cheek. (This habit occurred no less than five times a day; Sirius set his clock by the little hollow that appeared in Remus's cheek when he was worried, when he was sad, when he had half a roll of parchment due, when it was four-thirty, when he was full of mirth and might contaminate others. It was pointless telling him to stop.) "You feel sorry for me."
"No," he said slowly, unintended discipline in his voice. "I don't, because you belong here now. And everything belongs to you. You're all right, now."
5.
James won, in the end, with a curt letter that read Wankers and nothing else.
"I wasn't aware it was a game," Remus said. "I poured my soul into those letters, Black."
Sirius played a private game of his own, then, lobbing a mad question back and forth in his mind; he nearly reached into his trouser pocket a dozen times to unearth the September letter to make Remus discuss Feelings. He closed his eyes and inhaled July. Sense-deprived compartments of his brain feasted on oxygen, and stayed his hand, and Sirius concentrated on stillness. The window was open - as it had been for days - and he smelled stubborn rain that wouldn't arrive until late August, before they came together again in autumn with all its blue sky, apple-crisp air and seventh year terrors, the latter of which was still a foreign menace on Remus's bedroom floor.
It was morning, technically: the clock read two and six. The Tizer they were drinking was stale and left his mouth waxy, and a hundred carpet fibers clung to his perfectly shirtless back. Ordinarily this was not Sirius's favorite pastime but they were celebrating, and they did not know why they were celebrating, but they had no reason not to and this was as good a reason as any. Remus was eating a festive bowl of ice in lieu of swimming in the pond, which they'd discovered had dried up.
"When are you going home?" Remus said, and then apologized four times for any misconceptions.
"I meant to James's," he said.
"I know," said Sirius.
"I'm not counting down the days or anything," he said.
"I know," Sirius said. "And I don't know. I like it there. I like it here."
"Hm," Remus said. He smiled impishly, his lower lip perfect cherry-colored from the ice chips he sucked on. His face shone a little in the balmy heat, and with the thrill of acceptance. Sirius smiled with him.
Later, they lay facing opposite walls with their heads nearly even. Some soft thing brushed Sirius's temple, but it was only a lock of Remus's hair. "Funny," Remus said, "that I should call it home. Do you do that too?"
Sirius frowned. "No. Maybe. I suppose." He glanced at Remus, who was watching him intently for the first time in days, seeing him and seeing himself and listening. He looked perpetually apologetic, embarrassingly tender. "James is family," Sirius mumbled, finally. "That's all. I don't know about anything else."
"It's okay," Remus said, and the clock counted the seconds of silence after that, the sweaty sheen of its face staring at them and waiting. "It's late," he said quietly. "It's still so warm." He stared straight at the ceiling and then sat up slowly, propelled from his shoulders by some unseen force. He padded round the room and Sirius listened to the night sounds for a while, and the little clink of the melting ice swirling in the glass bowl. Everything dripped by extraordinarily slow with the heat; you flexed your hand and found your joints fluid but sluggish, your blood sun-heated; you felt lazy and serpentine and sated every moment of the day.
Something cool-hot shocked him awake, and there was a tiny huff of laughter somewhere behind him. The ice cube slid down Sirius's cheek, freezing as it went. "Cold?" Remus said, heavy-lidded. He leaned forward so they were eye-to-eye, upside down.
"Arctic," said Sirius.
Remus scooped the cube up into nimble fingers and smoothed it over Sirius's forehead again, melting it in tiny circles that dripped into his eyes, down the side of his nose and caught in the bow of his lips, parting them. Sirius did not speak to stop him or to tease, though both occurred to him. He could feel Remus hesitate, momentarily, as he brushed his knuckles across Sirius's brow, leaving an aura of blue and frost even where he wasn't touching Sirius. Then Remus dipped back into the bowl again and drew runes and knots on Sirius's forehead, every first touch so cool it burned, and numbed, broke internal fevers and started new ones. The moment was deathly quiet. Sirius stared out the window and saw the top of Remus's head reflecting, all halos in his hair, bouncing red and gold sparks from the desk-lamp, but perhaps this was a trick of the light.
Something soft sealed on his forehead, across a delicately pulsing vein. Remus kissed him, and no one breathed. Then Remus sat up and brushed it all away with the glistening pink heel of his hand, and only smiled when Sirius stared back at him in wonder.
6.
(Home home home, he thought, with a jolt uncharacteristic of summer, home is where you are. It would come out wrong if he said it, so he started looking for another way while Remus was sleeping. Sirius crept through his room like a thief, touching ornaments and objects and every thing that Remus loved. He memorized each inch of the walls, the exact horrid plaid, and the square of window in which the moon was nestled. He felt every fiber of the scratching burgundy carpet, every speckled grain on the old desk and every hair on the head of the boy fast asleep in his bed, eyes screwed up in all the strange corridors of his subconscious. It took Sirius an hour to find a spare bit of paper and when he did he wrote one word, and tucked the corners of the paper together, and hid it someplace where Remus would find it, when he needed to.)