A/N: Written for rtchallenge on Live Journal, using prompts that included a picture of a scroll, a woman in bed, and romance (genre).

Disclaimer: Anything you recognise isn't mine.


She lay with her head on his stomach, tracing patterns on his hipbone with the very tips of her fingers, and, in the background, Sunday Morning Love Songs played on the WWN.

They always listened to it if they were together, had done since they'd woken up after that first night to a sickly dedication from someone calling himself Bilius in Hampstead. Remus had asked, sleepily, if that was his name or an indication of how he really felt about the show, and they'd laughed –

And then kissed, and there hadn't been any of that morning-after awkwardness she'd been dreading since she woke to the grey light of dawn with his arms around her.

Now, it was a tradition, and it was nice to have something like that, with him, something that was just theirs.

Sometimes, they made fun of the requests, the adjective-heavy letters people had owled in to express their devotion, and other times they just curled up and listened, until they got too distracted by each other to even notice there was music playing.

She traced a figure of eight on his skin, he slipped his fingers into her hair, and she smiled as familiar tingles traversed her body. They always did find each other so very distracting.

The song that had been drifting through the room – something so saccharine it made Celestina Warbeck seem positively restrained – dwindled out, and Tonks turned her face, pressed her ear to Remus' stomach and listened to the sounds of him, the gurgles and squelches going on inside, letting her fingers wander lower.

"Dear Sunday Love Songs – "

The presenter's voice was somewhere between a low purr and a slightly contemptuous smirk –

"Love the show. Please could you dedicate a song to my beautiful wife Claudette. We've been married for forty-three years this week and the radiant warmth of her smile still brings as much joy to my saggy soul as it did when we first met all those years ago. Things haven't always been easy for us, what with me being a professional manticore tamer and often away for long stretches, but the memory of Claudette's smile and wonderful cooking always keeps me going through the tough times. Tell her I love her very much, Bernard Cudgings, Stroud."

Remus sniggered.

Tonks shifted to look at him, resting her chin next to his bellybutton and peering up at him through her fringe. She'd joked, once, that if he really liked her, he'd write in and ask for her favourite song –

And he hadn't, of course, because signing himself Remus, Grimmauld Place, secret Headquarters of the Order of The Phoenix, would have been a bit of a giveaway – and she hadn't really wanted him to, but –

"I suppose you think you could do better?" she said, arching one eyebrow at him.

He considered her for a moment, his mouth hitching into half a smile, and not for the first time, she wondered what he was thinking, what he would write, if he did.

Just once, she thought, it'd be nice to know what was going on in that head of his, what he really thought about her, them, what all this distraction meant – if it was just that for him, a pleasant diversion from what was happening in the world, or something more. "Actually," he said, "I was just thinking about poor Bernard having nothing more than the memory of a warm smile and good cooking to rely on when he flies into battle with the manticores."

Tonks almost laughed. It would have been easy to, but –

She'd done so much dancing around saying what she felt.

"That's what love is though, isn't it?" she said, meeting his eye steadily. "Something to keep you going."

"Is it?" he said, smiling in question.

"I don't know," she said, shaking her head slightly, sighing in amusement, and then settling back on his stomach. "What do you think it is?"

"Indefinable," he said, and she rolled her eyes.

It was such a Remus answer, gave nothing away –

"People talk about it," he said, "write about it endlessly – sing about it in these awful ballads – " She sniggered next to his skin, and for a second, he paused, his fingers just tickling her neck as they drifted down, then up again. " – but they don't come close to explaining it, the sensation of it."

She shifted, looked up, and he held her gaze. "You know it when you feel it, though," he said, smiling slightly.

And he hadn't said it, not really –

But as he drew her towards him, it was there. It was in his kiss and in his touch and in the way he moved –

And as she thought about it, before she let herself become completely distracted by him, she knew that really, it always had been, and she never had needed a string of adjectives to know it.


A/N: Thanks for reading :). Reviewers get a soppy dedication from a HP character of their choosing ;).