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Summer Grass

(1978)

"Nothing's ever simple," said Remus out of the blue, dropping his head back against the grass and resting his book at his hands against his chest.

Sirius turned his own head and looked sideways at him. It was an odd angle and Remus's face seemed imprisoned in a blonde-green cage because stalks of tough summer grass stuck up in defiant tuffs between them.

"Eh," he said, which wasn't exactly the most intelligent response he could have thought up, but it was too impossibly hot to be bothered with intelligent responses and, besides, he recognised the expression on Remus's face: pale eyes half shut and gazing off beyond the clear sky, mouth pursed a little. Sirius knew that Remus wasn't actually expecting an answer at all; in reality he was talking to himself, but addressing the words in Sirius's direction made him feel saner. Sirius didn't mind. And he was used to it; Remus had been doing it all summer.

"Never simple," continued Remus in that pleasant rhyme-like voice that he adopted when he was cogitating about stuff that Sirius wasn't actually interested in, but which he liked to hear anyway if Remus was the one talking about it. "Like James and Lily," Remus was saying through the heat of the mid afternoon air

"Just look at them. All those years of her loathing the very ground he walked upon and now they're going out. How did that happen? At which point did she suddenly decide, oh, he's not so bad after all, you know, and I think I kind of fancy him? What was the catalyst?"

"Well, if you believe James, it was when she realised what a good kisser he is," chuckled Sirius, and the sound seemed to summon Remus up from the depths of his thoughts and back into the present. He turned his head sideways and looked through the grass at the young man beside him, and smiled affectionately.

"You're as big an idiot as Prongs," he observed, not unkindly. "Do you honestly think someone with the integrity of Lily Evans would fall for a bloke for something as superficial as whether he can kiss well or not?"

Sirius smiled. "Superficial? I'd say kissing ability is a pretty important factor in a relationship." His smirk broadened. "Hey, we all know it's the only reason you're with me, marvellous kisser that I am."

Remus laughed. "Not a chance."

Sirius rose up on one elbow and leant slightly across the space between them. It was so hot that the air seemed thick with it, and he could feel the heat rising from Remus's body, and almost taste the salty smell of his damp hair.

"Are you implying, Remus John Lupin, that I am not a splendiferous kisser?"

Remus smiled a slow smile up at him. He let go of his book completely, and reached a hand up from where he lay to run a finger along Sirius's jaw. "Arrogant twit. You know perfectly well that's not what I meant." He moved the hand down and hooked it around Sirius's neck, pulling him in close, kissing him with comfortable familiarity, fingers playing in amongst the fine black hair that curtained his lover's face. "What I meant was," he continued as Sirius pulled back to study him with darkened grey eyes, "Is that that's not the reason I'm with you, and you know it."

"Yes," sighed Sirius dramatically. "It's my classically handsome good-looks." And he ran his hand back through his hair in a perfect imitation of James.

Remus laughed again. Sirius put a hand flat in the dry grass on the other side of Remus, and rested his weight against it, so that he half lay across the other man's chest.

"Is too hot," muttered Remus, but his eyes were smiling. Then he reached down with a small disapproving grunt and rescued the book on his chest from beneath Sirius's body. He held it up above their heads, looked at it, made a mental note of the page numbers, then shut it and set it aside. Sirius watched him, the hand upon which he wasn't leaning playing absently with the buttons of Remus's shirt.

"What're you reading anyway?"

"G.K. Chesterton," answered Remus but then, without waiting for a response, asked, "Do you think James'll ask Lily to marry him?"

Sirius half shrugged. "Probably. He's been barmy about that girl since I don't know when. Why? You've really got them on the brain today, haven't you?"

The expression on Remus's face was gentle, and a little sad. "I suppose. I just… can't help thinking about what Dumbledore told us. About the Order. You know James wants to join."

"And? So do you. So do I."

"Yes, but we're not going to get married, are we? We're not going to have children. There's a difference, you know."

His voice had the lilt to it of a man who's somewhat lost, and Sirius couldn't think what to say, so he let the sun beat down on them as the warm wind played rough with the summer grass, and his hand toyed with Remus's buttons.

"Nothing's ever simple."