Chapter Text
It was going to be closer cut than Remus had initially thought. Already the cracked red earth that surrounded them had turned to a thin layer of mud that slowly crept further onto the road, making the tires spin dangerously as they swung around a bend in the narrow path, avoiding some unseen obstacle that must have once lay there. It wouldn't be long until the road was coated in a layer of fast running, highly dangerous, flood water instead of its predecessor.
The rain came down fast and hard. Lashing as it did so against the stretched canvas covering the truck's precious cargo. Tires picking up speed as the truck made to escape its rusty red road jail. Once the storm had begun, there was no stopping it. The noise of what could’ve been a hundred small rocks bouncing off every part of the truck, accompanied by the light tapping of Sirius’s fingers against the door and the roar of the motor, made up the only sounds to be heard by any listening ears.
The once dusty, but otherwise clean, truck now had a thin layer of mud splattered up its sides. Flecks of the dirt shot off the tires and spread up the canvas as they spun desperately in the mud, trying to gain traction in the slowly sinking ground. The small puddles, already visible on the road ahead, caused Remus’ grip on the wheel to slip as the tires were dunked in and out of the murky water. The sky, once a vibrant sunny-day blue, was entirely obscured in a deep grey-black. So dark was it, that it wouldn’t be amiss to say that it appeared to be nearing the late evening, opposed to nearing mid-afternoon.
Never let it be said that the storms in Western Australia weren’t as vicious as those on the East Coast.
Sirius looked utterly relaxed, practically lounging in the faded cream seat. With its faded undertone stained a deep red with a slash of blackened streaks and frayed stitches sticking out into the light. The seats were in dire need of replacement. His fingers continued in their slow march against the door frame, never missing a beat, while his eyes watched the distant and gloomy horizon.
Remus’s wipers had an unfortunate gap in them, leaving a ugly smear in the middle of his windscreen. It forced Remus to lean down over the wheel, head ducked, closer to the wheel than he would have liked. But it worked, it was the only way for Remus to catch a glimpse of the rain soaked desert out of the murky glass. Fog was already starting to build in the corners of the windshield, creeping down into his only clear view.
Remus was proud of his truck. It was far from the newest or the most luxurious that the company owned; but it was his. Fully so, as he had bought it out from the company when he’d heard they were moving to get rid of the older models and move in the shiner, larger, and most importantly, newer ones. After him working for so many years at the yard, and with them planning on dumping the thing anyway, he’d managed to get a more than fair price on it. Lucky, he'd never be able to afford this truck if it was new.
It was his most prized possession, as well as being his home. Remus’ check from the yard would barely cover the rent on any of the nearby houses and he wasn’t about to spend what little money he made on a house he would barely use and couldn’t furnish anyway. No, he’d rather spend his nights in the back of his truck and his days driving it. ’There’s no point hanging about when you're not wanted,’ he reasoned whenever the roads got a little too long and lonely, ’sides, don’t know what I’d be doing now if it wasn’t for driving.’
As much as he treasured his truck, she did have a flaw that one day might prove fatal. Her passenger side front wheel rolled just ever so slightly on an angle. Leftover damage from a snapped axle on a trip a few years back, just barely after he’d started working at the yard. Remus’s mind flashed back to the incident at the thought of it. And to the memory of staring out the window in horror, as a wheel rolled past him, just before the entire cabin came down hard on the road, metal sparking against rocks as it dragged itself along with only its momentum to keep it going. The power behind the snapped axle had kept the wheel spinning just long enough for it to sheer off four of its six wing nuts, the other two falling loose as it did so. It caused the wheel to fly from its place and dash across the road, into the scrub. It’d knocked over a small tree on its journey, the poor thing having had to grow in the middle of the desert, barely hanging on, was barely thicker than Remus’s wrist. Even with the obvious path of destruction, they had never managed to find the runaway tire.
It had been the first time he’d thought he was going to die out here. Alone in the desert and crushed under the weight of a couple tonne truck. It had been by sheer dumb luck that the shitty little radio the yard had fitted a few weeks before, managed to get a call out to a nearby farm station. The call had just barely cracked through to them, and if they hadn’t been testing their own equipment, he likely never would have been found. At least not until another driver stumbled upon the tangled ruins of his truck and likely Remus’ own remains.
Remus had never been a religious man, but that day he might as well have been. For he had thanked whatever god might’ve been listening more times then he’d ever even thought of before.
The axel had been welded and sealed. It’d cost too much to order a new one from overseas just to replace something that could be fixed through brute force, but she’d never been the same again. Since that day, the wheel had always been at a slight angle compared to its partner. Causing Remus constant headaches over the years as he had to constantly recorrect his path. Taking his attention off a road any more complicated than simply straight, flat and dry for a moment could cause the wheel to spin out, reangling itself into the nearest ditch. It seemed to really enjoy being submerged in a deep ditch, filled with water and possibly venomous things.
Suffice to say, Remus had kicked the tire more than once when hopping in and out of the cabin. Even if he did have to walk around the truck in order to give it a nice hardy kick, it felt like a tradition at this point. And a reminder that nothing was for certain out here.
Mud spun as the wheel caught in a pothole, spinning desperately as it tried to escape its muddy grave. Spluttering for a few more spins before finally jamming, the wheel came to a slippery halt. Its partner had no such obstacles, the truck spun on its singular wheel, nearly doubling back on itself before it finally slowed to a halt with Remus foot softly pressing its brake.
Cursing his luck, Remus cranked the gears, trying to get the truck to sputter up the edge of the stupidly deep pothole. Even if it had been dry out, chances are he still would’ve had the misfortune of hitting it. Except instead of being filled with mud that tightened its grip with every spin of the wheel, it would have been filled with the infamous bulldust. The fine red power would fill the gaps in the already dusty paths, making them look complete and stable. That was, until someone drove over it. Then the bulldust would immediately sink down, leaving a jaggard hole where before there had been none. Either way, he ended up with a tired stuck in a hole and more than a few curses slipping from his lips.
The only difference being the fact that the rain definitely made this situation far worse than it needed to be.
Having a probably insane hitchhiker in the cabin next to him didn’t help matters either.
Remus knew he had two options, jump out of the cab and risk this delusion of a man jumping behind the wheel and riding off when Remus eventually got the tire free, or they could sit in the cab and hope to whatever gods cared that the rain wasn’t enough to fill the arroyo.
It wasn’t a choice in the end, the risk of sitting and waiting was too great and from the looks of it, the water level was already building. The dust’s hunger for moisture wouldn’t last forever, already small rivulets that once were mud had turned to streams and had begun draining from the edges of the road, stumbling into pools that would only grow as the day wore on. Remus would have to risk being left for dead, rather than certainly killing them both.
Knuckles bled white as he gripped the wheel, fingers seeming to curl into themselves. His teeth, first clenched so tight they hurt, now released in a rush, causing a sharp intake from the dust covered man. Remus pushed his truck again. And again. A feeble hope in him urging him to try again and again. Each time he pushed the truck, he risked the axle snapping again, or the tire coming loose, or any of a thousand problems that would surely leave them for dead. Please. Come on. You can do it. Mentally shoving the truck forward with all his might, the motor growled darkly before the wheel caught yet again, jerking the truck to a stop. The sudden jolt forward caused his left hand to slip from the gear stick, slamming forward into the control panel with a resounding crack.
He swore.
“Bloody hell, this stupid fuckin’ thing.”
Shaking his wrist to relieve the numb pain, his eyes caught a flashed glance from Sirius. Wheeling around to face the man that before now had not moved his eyes from the distant horizons on the desert, Remus studied the drawn and sullen face of the dark haired man. His eyes lowered to now watch a drop of water run down from the cracked rim of the sun shield. The man couldn’t know the danger they were in, not with his out of place clothes and foreign accent, but he clearly knew something was amiss with the situation. How do you go about telling a man you don’t even know that you’re both surely to die out here in the heart of the desert?
Remus didn’t trust Sirius Black. It would be a fool's error to believe every man he met out in the dunes. More than a few people out here were running from something, and a good number of them would split him open from mouth to belly and not lose a wink of sleep over it either. But, in cases like this, it wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter. It was a trust or risk being killed situation. Lurching forward with a snap, Remus hand grabbed onto Sirius’ upper arm, harshly pulling the surprisingly soft fabric towards him slightly as he hissed;
“Don’t touch anything, Don’t try anything. Understood?”
Sometimes the best way to make sure someone wasn’t going to kill you was to make it seem like you might kill them first.
Sirius nodded, his head having whipped around to look at Remus. His eyes were still hollow, as unseeing as eyes that do can be. They weren’t right. Sirius’s face didn’t fit its features onto it with the ease others did. The closer Remus got the more he saw. It was an indiscernible thing, so slight that he wouldn’t have noticed it, but he was sure the dark ringlets framing the man's face, silky if it hadn’t been for the dust and grim covering them, had been recently cut. And with something that probably wasn’t meant to be used to cut hair, if Remus wasn’t mistaken. As curious as he was about the mans story, along with how the fuck he got into the middle of the desert in the first place, he had a job to do before any unimportant, or nosy, thoughts could occupy his mind.
Remus nodded at the empty-eyed man, releasing him from his grip before grabbing the chipped handle, and with a grunt, swinging the door open into the harsh open arms of a mid-year storm.