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Sirius groans, throwing a heavy arm up to cover his face, and Remus lets out a breathless half-laugh in response. The movement rocks Sirius’s head where he’s pillowed it on Remus’s stomach. It’s a familiar position, comfortable and worn in around the edges, hints of nostalgia painting the thick air around them. Sirius’s long hair tickles against his bare skin, his pale legs with their spidery veins twitch. The world moves slowly around them, all one thick and heavy August day without a breeze. Sweat sticks to their naked bodies.
“We’re going to get arrested for public indecency.” Remus mutters.
“Let ‘em try.” Sirius replies, sprawled comfortably across the dry grass and Remus’s body.
It’s a beautiful sight, truly, Sirius Black in the heat of the day. Somehow the sweat on his skin looks more like dew than anything else. He manages to look like he’s rolled out of a Renaissance painting even in the 90-degree heat of the Welsh countryside.
“I think it would be fairly easy, actually. We’re sitting targets.”
“Laying targets. Slowly dying of heat targets. Wilting targets.”
Remus rolls his eyes even though Sirius can’t see it. He knows Sirius can feel it when he snorts because there’s a noise of descent and a lazy hand beats against the outside of his thigh.
“You’re supposed to agree with me, wanker.”
“Am I?”
The sky above them reflects the water perfectly, deep and shimmering blue. Clouds run streaks through it like cracks in a fresco. Remus traces patterns with his eyes as his fingers recreate them on Sirius’s sides and stomach.
“Yes,” Sirius says emphatically. “It’s a cardinal rule of boyfriend-dom.”
“You’re making that up.”
Sirius brings the hand on his chest up to his mouth and nips at Remus’s fingers. He looks cross-eyed and grumpy as he scowls without much malice up at Remus. The grin and shiver he gets in return only make him scowl deeper. No one scowls half as beautifully as a Black, disinherited or not.
“I make nothing up.”
Remus’s laugh shakes Sirius off of his stomach and brings tears to his eyes. He gets swatted for it, only has to wait a few brief seconds of shuffling and wriggling before Padfoot has landed all 55 pounds of doggie body solidly on Remus’s chest.
“Cheater.” Remus wheezes as he scratches behind Padfoot’s ears. The dog pants happily in his face. “You can’t just change every time you’re losing an argument you know.”
Padfoot settles his weight down and rolls his eyes, leg twitching.
The heat doesn’t show signs of abating. Having a big black dog sprawled over his chest certainly makes it worse yet he can’t find in himself to push Padfoot away. Somewhere in the distance Peter and James yell and dunk each other in and out of the Irish Sea. Salt spots Remus’s body, refusing to sweat off, leaving him briny and speckled. Padfoot licks at his skin half-heartedly. Remus wishes he’d change back.
Instead they lie there, squished together. He has Padfoot’s hot breath in his ear and the sun making him drowsy and compliant.
“Sirius.” He breathes, eyes closed against the light.
Padfoot whines and snuffles at his ear. Remus pushes him away.
“Sirius.”
The dog licks at his neck and shoulder in long, sloppy stripes. He crinkles his face but doesn’t push the dog away. Experience shows the best way to deal with a stubborn Sirius Black is simply to outwait him. Remus has nine years of practice to his name. Patience stands as his one shining virtue.
James says that Remus took up Sirius Black as his elective Third Year; and that’s how he can always pin down exactly what their mercurial friend leaves in the gaps between his words and his actions, the weighty pauses he drops and never addresses. They all have a good laugh about it, the four of them. Remus Lupin: unemployed Hogwarts graduate, waste-away lay-about, Prefect, Marauder, Sirius Black whisperer, werewolf. They all have a good hearty laugh and Remus never voices the only truth he has ever known. He can read them all as easily as the daily post because he’s been doing the same thing to everyone in his life since the age of four and hasn’t ever figured out a way to stop.
The heat makes him philosophical. There’s nothing to do in weather like this but lie naked in a field and think.
“They’re like an old married couple.” Sirius presses his words into Remus’s skin just to make him twitch. In the distance he can hear Peter shrieking at James for dropping a crab down his pants, and the echoes of the peals of laughter serving as James’s reply.
“Pete says the same about us.” Remus replies as he lets his hands follow the line of Sirius’s naked ass.
“He’s just jealous because he’s never had the honor of my tongue in his mouth.”
Remus snorts. “I can assure you that’s not why Peter’s jealous.”
In the silence between them Remus can read nothing. In the taunt lines of his best friends body he reads tension, unease and the sort of boyish nervousness he hasn’t seen since any of them turned twelve.
“Stop worrying. That’s why we came down here, isn’t it? To stop worrying.”
“We came down here because it’s hot as Merlin’s balls and there’s nothing to do in that tongue twister town of yours.”
“Conwy’s not that bad.” Remus protests.
Sirius cocks an eyebrow and pokes Remus in his most ticklish spot. Giggling, Remus flails his way out from underneath Sirius, eyes watering with the effort to not laugh. He hates getting tickled. Somehow it’s a bit less awful when Sirius does it. Somehow, all the things Remus hates the most turn out less awful when Sirius does them. He guesses this must be the height of love.
Once Remus gets far enough away Sirius scrambles up and follows him. There’s a half-hearted chase around the meadow that’s more public groping than a chase.
“We could, you know.” Sirius picks up a conversation that Remus can’t remember the start of, casual attempts at nonchalance rolling off him in waves.
“Could what?” Remus asks as he settles down into the crook of Sirius’s side.
“Prove Pete right.”
Remus twists around until Sirius can see exactly how little he understands this line of conversation. Sirius reaches out and runs his fingers through Remus’s hair, eyes gentle and far away.
“Be the old married couple he thinks we are.”
Something in Remus’s chest twists and summersaults all at once. “We’re not old.” He says automatically, turning to plant a kiss on Sirius’s palm. “Nor are we married.”
“Both of those’ll happen eventually.” Sirius says this with such confidence that Remus almost falls over. “So why not speed up the process?”
Someone’s heart is pounding so fast that Remus can hear it in the silence. He’s not sure who the staccato beat belongs to.
“What?” Remus manages. There has never been any part of him that expected this turn of events.
“Marry me.”
“What?” Remus repeats with more urgency. They are naked in a field in the middle of August. He has always figured these sorts of conversations happen fully clothed, usually with some sort of planning. Not that he has ever known Sirius Black to plan out emotional moments beforehand.
“Come on, Moony.” Sirius looks a little like Remus might say no, which is- which is just ridiculous- but they are naked in a field and he does not think that Sirius really understands the gravitas of these words. “It’s not so horrible an idea, is it?”
No, Remus hardly thinks it’s that horrible an idea. He has never allowed himself to think much about it at all, frankly. Married. Rings and honeymoons in the middle of a war, and Sirius with his last name, Sirius in his bed- their bed- every night, Sirius hunched over his coffee pot, Sirius will be his, his, his. Just in these few wild seconds, Remus allows himself to think about it.
“I don’t, I don’t think we can, legally.”
The jut of Sirius’s jaw speaks of stubborn pigheadedness and the wild ideas that always got them into the most trouble. It’s a wonderful sight, Sirius mid-plan. “Then I’ll take you somewhere we can. James is going to ask Lily. He’s been on about it for months. Took me ring shopping and everything. If he gets to marry Lily, I get to marry you.”
Remus lets out a breath.
Sirius waits.
Remus takes in a breath.
Sirius fidgets.
They are naked in the middle of a Welsh field.
Time passes.
Remus speaks.
“Ask me.”
“What?”
“Ask me, Padfoot.”
Sirius takes a deep breath in. Sits up.
Remus waits.
“Marry me?”
“Yeah, okay.”
The heat becomes bearable. Sirius flops back into the grass. His face rivals the sun. Remus lays himself down carefully, shining. Their bodies touch in every possible place.
“Still think we’re going to be arrested.” Remus says.
Nearby, there’s the sound of wet feet clamoring over rocks, coupled with a shriek that could only come from James.
“Let ‘em try, Moony my lad.” Sirius says. “Let ‘em try.”