august, the dying month.
"The sulphurous rasp of another struck match, and foxglove, goldenrod and chicory, the dry flowers of late summer, an exhaustion I no longer look at."
At half past two on Sunday afternoon, Sirius turns up on the doorstep like a stray, with neither fanfare nor warning. There are sooty stains in the hollows of his tired eyes, and grit under the half-moons of his fingernails. He seems to have journeyed long, or perhaps it's just that Remus can't imagine traveling any distance at all, in this weather.
"Hot out today," announces Sirius, by way of greeting.
His trunk is exceedingly heavy. Remus tries not to imagine what manner of contraband he is dragging across the threshold of his home. He grits his teeth; even his hands are bleeding sweat, they slip stubbornly on the handle of Sirius's luggage. "You came all this way to talk about the weather?"
From behind him, Sirius gives the trunk a hearty shove. Remus looks back, and catches a glimpse of his infuriating, brilliant smile. "Heat always makes you cranky, Moony."
That first day they occupy themselves with walking up and down along the little creek just outside the village, which Remus knew had dried up in June. But it seems enough for them to dangle their feet over a river of richly-swirling dust and pebbles rounded from the memory of water; to watch the quivering of a naked blade of grass, bent dangerously low under the weight of a fat and sullen cricket. Sirius traces furrows in the powdery dirt with his fingertips, humming lazily, tunelessly; a late-summer song. Summoning speech requires an almost inhuman effort - the sweltering heat seems to have stolen the very words from their mouths, trimming their conversations to the minimum required for comprehension.
"Heard from Prongs?"
"Just a postcard," says Remus, chewing thoughtfully at the end of his thumb. "He sounds well."
"Oh," muses Sirius. Remus can't tell if he is pleased to hear about this. He watches as Sirius lifts a hand to scratch the back of his neck, and is mildly surprised to find a solitary ant wandering across his knuckles.
After a long pause, almost long enough for Remus to have had forgotten what they were talking about, Sirius adds, casually, "Hard for me to get my mail, at home." A soft noise - the self-conscious clearing of a throat. "You know how it is."
Remus did.
Later still they lie side-by-side on their backs, by the parched riverbank, close enough for Remus to see the hairs on Sirius's arm set alight by the setting sun. Grime coats the back of his arms from where they press into the dirt floor, staining his elbows the milky colour of clay. His tongue feels swollen and thick in his dry mouth. The indolent drone of bees winding their way home in the night lulls him into a languid stupor, which is broken only by the lilting sound of Sirius's voice.
"They're driving me mad," he says, now, conversational, almost flippant. He gives an elegant sweep of his arm, tugging a few lonely weeds from the sand with a certain studied carelessness.
"Your mum?"
"My brother -" he begins, but immediately breaks off.
Ah, thinks Remus, saying nothing. All around them the air is thick - sultry and secretive, heavy with meaning he isn't sure he grasps. For what little it's worth, Remus brushes a fingertip or two against Sirius's bare wrist and exhales softly, leaving his drowsy gaze resting somewhere in the middle distance. The dappled light of evening sets the web of trees overhead ablaze. Remus hears the weeping of birds fluttering in the still air, and feels an unexpected kinship with them. The warmth of the earth beneath his back mirrors the slow, smokeless burn inside his chest - the ache of being near enough to touch, the smoldering debris of feelings inexpressible.
On the walk home, by a fencepost encircling a field of tall grass which rustles and sings in the night, they meet a ginger cat with a kink halfway along its tail, bent as neatly as if made by a ruler. It accompanies them partway down the street, tail swishing languorously in the air, only to peel off at the intersection before Remus's house, perhaps having spotted a rubbish-bin to rummage through. For some reason this parting of ways catches Sirius's attention; he pauses by the roadside to look after its bottle-brush tail with a strangely melancholic air. For his part, Remus can only touch his elbow tenderly, divorced from understanding but not compassion. He wonders to himself, distantly, at how little things change.