A Scent Broken In
1.
There are cherrystains on his fingers.
Blackcherries, redcherries, blushes of a thousand colors, slick and resplendent with glossy promise. There are bubbles of cherry-color and smoothness on his table, in the glass-curl into which only wine is supposed to be poured. There is the red color, the shadow-arras, the sylph-dance of tap tap step. Remus's fingers look bruised and kissed, there is Sirius's gasp and his hair. He is leather, Muggle-jeans, mint-breath and he smells like home. Like living things. Like blood-gold, all sparkle.
The fleeing of cowhide gloves, sweat-sheathed madness on summer sunside. Sirius is something is his arms, the strong cradle of strong arms where one can lie down. There are kisses between berrybites, dreams of summer, dreams of fallen. There is a marginal urgency humming through but neither of them is listening.
Lightning strikes before the thunder can croon, it's speed against majesty, it's the nimble-zigzag versus the all-around tremble, the shaking of the earth. Electricity is absorbed back to the earth, by some metalpole or tall tree, but the sound is resonant, is echoy.
Sirius is breathing and it feels like forever since Remus has heard him breathe so calmly. His pulse is rabbit-quick, surging through his palms and legs, and even in Sirius's heart Remus can still hear the rise and fall, the breath going in and out, in and out.
But soon the sun is hot and simmering, and there is nothing but the curtain rustle and sheet chafing.
It is an afternoon.
It is slightly impossible to forget.
2.
The season of harvest is gold-threaded. Thrumming old, sepia-yellow.
Sirius dreams in times like this, he dreams of light things, smoke-wisps, hair-curls. There is a strand of brown, a strand of black. There are no leaves falling, only cinder-smells and scents of the burning and Remus's eyes slightly distorted through reading glasses. Sirius is still leather, still Muggle-jeans and stubbles. He is falling back on his chair, he is awhirl, he is dream-swallowed.
Remus's hands are like root tips, like the finger-branch of ancient trees, strong limbs made out of brown; his hands are like silkworm cocoons, Tang dresses, golden dragons whose whiskers bring rain and rice; his hands are like the messenger from home. The sweet connectedness Sirius can feel links him all the way to the core of the earth, where there is the final flap of summer-wings, and the burning of thousands.
Star-sparkle is extra bright, their twinkle twinkle a sad sort of wink, their periwinkle almost more blue than purple. The air is quiet with children counting stars.
Sirius knows Remus hates the city, hates it when it's autumn, hates it when the moon goes to that perfect circle. Because Moon Cakes mean moon-howls and longer fangs, mean extra bruises on Sirius's skin that Remus will be guilty of, looking back.
The sky is blue with tall and sheerness, vacuous with such a beguiling that Sirius almost jumps up, hoping that he'll latch onto the wind.
3.
The possibility of whiteness is overwhelming.
A clean slate for them to walk on, not the way it works but they won't care. There is a scar in the ground and the earth is broken. There is the snow, the papered willingness, the smiling ignorance; Sirius is treading through dead gardens and only the pines and evergreens are alive. It feels strangely satisfying, because Sirius like the poise and smell of them, their elderly greenness.
There is no promise in winter but for grace, for gentle numbness, for the length of eternity and the calm of peace. There is that bruised façade of the sacred silence, the divine Gothic, the lux nova flooding in now in just the one color of a snowy graveyard. But the painting is gone now. There are only photographs left, immobile images in black and white, with the priests frozen forever, on the narthex to the hushed holiness.
Sirius thinks that snow is the beginning of humanity. He asks Remus if it makes him a Surrealist, but Remus isn't paying attention. He is sitting at the far edge of the table, looking out the window, half-light and half-dark, fingers beneath his chin and eyes closed.
Sirius wonders what Remus dreams of in the winter's lace, if he skirts or yearns the seduction of the oath of peace and foreverness.
There is a slight warmth in the fire of a home, but Remus is cold all over, not dead, just cold. Sirius puts his arms around his neck, and wants Remus to find heat in the caverns of his mouth, the spaces between his teeth.
4.
The garden is abloom, quickly and suddenly, with the agile surprise of swallow-songs.
Remus shakes off the dusty snow from his coat. It's the joy of the first perk of green between the white, the break from that eternal world.
There are traces of red and pink everywhere, hints of little girl's scent floating through the windows. There are flirts and flutters of hush-hush, shoots and meristems, dewy drops of innocence. One and two and three. Changing like magic, like fairydust.
He is too dazed, too feverish to resist anything, and his eyes are half-blind when his hands aren't. He like this fuzzed warmth, this freshness, this magic. He pulls at Sirius's arms and he imagines them growing, sprouting out newness, their limbs and roots and fates intertwining together, becoming one. There is a waken dove droning above their roof, the oot oot of its existence fading away into the milieu. The butterflies with their fragile wings dance on grass, and kids try to catch them. Holding them up reverently with still-clumsy hands, and lets them go before realizing that they can no longer fly.
The air is busy with sounds of animal rustle, growth and returning.
Sirius's laugh is soft and unheavy, like effervescent water; bubbling up everywhere, little pockets of truth surfacing on his skin.
All Remus keeps thinking about is the buoyant tug of beginnings, bubbled or solid, concave or convex. It is so real he won't breathe at all. He'll just inhale and hold it there. He feels like calling it a soul, because he has no other word for this, this elbow-nudge and cherrywine flowing all the way to winter, Himalayas' Everest.