Taxonomy
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Inside the solarium of the Black family grew ornamental flowers and rare orchids. Sirius's mother has forbidden him to come near them (like she has forbidden him come near many other things. He remembers the mansion in Grimauld's like a giant china shop, full of luxuries you cannot touch) and Sirius – with the same instinct he always had for everything that was green and growing – knew that Walburga's plants will wither if he takes them out of the solarium.
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Even cactuses need heat and dryness. Like a beating heart, caged within flesh and bones. Certain plants, Sirius knows, can grow only within the greenhouse's sterilized uterus. Remus asked him when they were both young why does he like these prickly plants, and Sirius didn't know what to say. Just that it seems righter – that you wrap what you love with layers of heat and dryness. Maybe they reflect something of him, the part that preferred to sneak out of the house at three am and wait out on the Londonic cold to the train that will take him far away from everything Sirius ever knew – and then prick other people, because Sirius didn't knew other way. We're just a metamorphosis of wild plants, and it's just evolutionary processes.
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Snape seemed to know it. They didn't exactly talk at Oxford (in general, Remus Lupin was the only thing that interested Sirius at the department of molecule physics), but he was brilliant and he was annoying and he was the ex-lover of Remus. He and Rem once slept at Remus's dorm room (that lived barely on his scholarship), Rem bent to search inside the nightstand to take out the lubricant and against the drawer rolled Paul Celan's "Sprachgitter". Sirius frowned, because holocaustic poets were not Remus's thing (poets were not Remus's thing at all. Remus preferred to listen to The Beatles and try to take Sirius to the college's recitals), and Rem just grabbed his wrist and said that "It's Severus's. He was looking for it. I'll tell him I found it."
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Of course Remus – like every good thing of Sirius's life – was stuck in the past. Rem didn't survive his living conditions, he didn't survive the heat and the dryness and the thorns. "You're just like your plants, Black." He bent toward the wooden scribbled crate, and sighed. "I can't live like you. I don't want to live like you." Remus closed the crate. "I don't want to burn."
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He didn't see Remus in the later years (and not even Snape, the bastard. Jamie sent him interesting articles from time to time, but the simple truth is that Sirius preferred to pretend that he doesn't understand a thing in physics – molecular or not – long after those gestures stopped gracing him Remus rolling his eyes and smiling amused). It's been almost thirteen years before he dared coming back to England, and he still has this place (at the corner of his eye, at the end of his toes) that still believes that he is wandering Patagonia's hot dunes, still twenty three years old and talking to him.
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They want him at Oxford. Obviously. Sirius was the brightest student in Eton's (in spite of the personnel's opposition). The excellent student of the year. All the botanic world courts him. Then he accepts the suggestion, it's not like he has anything better to do. Jamie and Lily live close by (and their kid, Harry). Remus is in America – far from the eye, far from the heart. There is just one factor that Sirius doesn't take into account.
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Jamie, (that had bourgeosify, and probably ate sushi with all the yuppies in the middle of the 80's) asked him once why does he despise Snape so much. Is it because Remus (does e even know that Remus is teaching now at Harvard- "Thanks, Jamie, you can stop now"). Sirius delayed, took deep breaths (restrained the memory of Remus smiling, that appeared in front of his eyes), and nodded. It's not rational, "You know. It's like an onion-"
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Jamie furrowed his forehead.
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There are some dishes, Sirius knows, that you cannot come near. Snape was a sadistic bastard, and treated Remus and everyone around him like nothing. Sirius despised him because of that, and because of other things – like Sirius despised onion, and onion's look and onion's smell. But no dish is as horrible as it will make you hurl if you eat it. It's your phobia, your irrational disgust, that make you hurl.
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Snape seems to hunt Sirius like a hollow memory – to life of schizophrenia. Sirius tried not to think about it (not to think about him), but the pale face, the skinny hands and the frozen voice, they all remind him things he despises. There are cactuses that grow under the ground zero, but they all need dryness, and Snape is oily and slippery. Sirius remembers the night he ran away from home: it was raining like crowded barrages on the ground, and he thought he was withering under weight of memories (hemorrhage flooded his right eye, and he swore that he'll never cry again). The rain worned him, attached his clothing to his skin, and just inside the Potter's light and warm he could bloom again. Jamie hugged him, smothered his hair and promised him that everything will be alright (they never spoke about that night ever, even though nothing happened.) he remembered himself crawling under the blankets, alone, and the heat was almost terrible. Almost feverish. Sirius almost felt alive – again.
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Oxford didn't change in the passing years. Sirius stands at the top of Tom's tower, watching the Tom Quad, cool and silver out of frost this morning of October, and feeling how his blood dilute inside his veins, slowly becoming into water. He is thirty four years old and slowly dies. Not out of sickness, not out of love – perhaps memories. He is not sure.
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He drinks a lot. The whiskey makes him warm – part of the continuing process of the photosynthesis. Sugar flowing in his veins, and he walks like a cloud of sugar and oxygen – transparent and invisible – in Oxford's streets. One night, darkening his face inside his chives glass, he stumbles upon Snape, rocking a glass of malt and looking gloomy and loathsome as always. Sirius is about to stand up when Snape sits next to him, putting gently the short glass, as if as he is ritualizing his moves.
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"Get lost, Snape."
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The other professor raises his eyebrow.
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"Lupin is not going to come back, Black." Snape raised his glenfiddich. "And you're making an idiot out of yourself."
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"Go to hell."
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Snape just gulping his drink. "It's not big enough for the both of us."
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It takes almost a year to wipe out all of his business in Oxford. At least that what Sirius tells himself once he is getting on the plane to Kennedy, and from there – to Buenos Aires, to the land of fire. There are suite cases that Sirius hasn't opened in his three years at Oxford, and he never moved around with heavy gear. All Sirius had to do was accept the decision of leaving, and maybe Snape was right, and Sirius kept waiting for twenty one years old Rem to change his mind and leave his crate when Sirius pulls him against, and they will make love until dawn. It didn't happen – and Sirius returns to Patagonia, to the wailing whales under the water, to the risen cactuses, tall and proud, above the dunes.
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Sometimes he knows the no one would come after him to the blinding dunes and the beating on sun. That no one will share with him the bland water inside the canteen, or caress his fingers over the egotist plants and admire them. It's alright – cactuses don't need a thing to survive. No water. No soil. No dirt. Remus knew it. Now Sirius too. But sometimes, in his dreams, he can see golden eyes, and white hands caressing his body in the middle of the darkness of the dessert.
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Fin