Woah, this is so not my OTP. I feel a bit like a cheating spouse (I love you, really! She meant nothing, baby!). Also this is the first het I have EVER WRITTEN. How weird is that? I am so very uncomfortable with it. I hope it's readable.

"You're being absolutely ridiculous!"

"And you're behaving like an absolute child!" he says, his usually calm, controlled voice booming, filling up the small room.

"Oh, so that's what it is, in'it? I'm too bloody young, you old git!"

"Tonks, stop it!" he nearly shouts (as near to shouting as Remus Lupin has possibly ever been in his life.) He runs his hands through his hair a little maniacally, and tries to pace, but there's not enough floor to get up a good frustrated gait.

"You stop it! You started it, now you stop it."

At once, Tonks finds she is both completely seething and terribly exhausted, and it's a strange sensation. She wants nothing more than to crawl into the unmade bed she's just plopped down on and make Remus crawl in with her so she can slide her cold feet between his knees and he can grumble about it until they both fall asleep. But she can't do that just now, and if she doesn't pull herself together and win this damned argument (or "conversation," as Remus insists on calling it) she might never get to do that again.

"Tonks."

He's using his teachery voice now, the one Tonks likes to tease and make suggestive comments about, only now it makes her want to smack him or be swallowed by the floor, in equal portions. It makes her feel about fourteen, that voice, which is the exact opposite of how she wants to feel right now. She wants to feel mature and reasonable and womanly, like someone in control of things, like the successful young Auror she is, but she doesn't.

"You know the things at stake here. You know what these men are capable of—"

"Men? Remus, these aren't men we're talking about, they're evil, they're creatures—"

"They're as much men as I am," he says, his voice steely and cold.

"No. No, they're not."

Now they're getting down to it. After all the talk of duty and loyalty, they are finally getting to the real conversation—the conversation they are having beneath the conversation. The same conversation they are always having, beneath every conversation.

"I believe you will find that once a month we are exactly the same. The only difference— the only difference— between them and I is that I had a family that kept me, I had a school to go to and friends and a life. I had opportunities. None of them did. I'm not condoning what the pack is doing, but the fact is, we are not so different."

And then it happens: it's a sort of sickening lurch in her stomach and Tonks knows, she just bloody knows, that she's lost. It is so very lucky that she's sitting down because her knees go a bit rubbery and it feels like her stomach has decided it's not pleased with its current address, and is preparing to leap right out of her mouth and move to Bulgaria, or something.

This is not going at all as it should. It was terribly logical and practical in his mind, but Remus realizes he should have known she would muck it up, make it harder than it already was, as though that were possible.

She's so small and bright sitting there, on her bed (that until a few hours ago had become their bed, but is now distinctly Not His). Her hair is obscenely red, the way it often gets when they have conversations that she childishly labels "arguments." Remus wants nothing more than to pull her up and wrap his arms around her waist and kiss her until neither of them can remember their own names, let alone that there's a war on, or that people, real, breathing people, are dying, or that the wonderful thing that was Them is in the process of being relegated to the past tense. And that it's all because of him— he wouldn't mind if they could forget that too.

"Remus, that's not what I meant." Her voice has gotten smaller, as well; it's smaller and softer and it trembles a little on his name. "I—You are human. You are smart and sneaky and wickedly funny and a thousand other things that I know you know you are. And you don't do the things they do. They aren't men, you are more of a man than they could ever be, put together."

It's quite flattering, but he knows that's not how she means it. She's being honest and serious, and she's never serious. She can't even manage to be serious when they're making love— all ringing laughter and wise cracks at completely inappropriate moments, but he can't imagine it any other way. Right now though, she has her fists tucked under her thighs (he doesn't need to see her hands to know they're fists), and her eyes are black and piercing, and her chin is tilted up like a challenge. She is a fighter through and through, and Remus just hopes he survives to walk away.

"Tonks, please."

Now he's begging, though he doesn't know what for. Forgiveness? Mercy? "I, I think it's best if we just... Let it go."

Gods, would she just scream or throw something or... or something? But no, she's just going to sit there and stare at him like he's killed her goddamn puppy.

"'Let it go'? What in the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Just that I—You and I are... This was never built to last, we both know that, and maybe, out of all of this—and I know this isn't the ideal circumstance—but maybe this is fate's way of giving us a clean break."

"You don't believe in fate."

Her voice is so quiet, so controlled.

This is not going well at all.

This is insane.

This is the most absurdly absurd thing anyone in the history of the world has had to endure, and Tonks firmly believes she should receive a medal for not hexing him through the floor. And what's even more irritating is that he makes it sound like it's all sensible and logical and just what in the hell does logic have to do with it?

Love, in its most basic, unpolished, terrifying form, is completely and utterly impractical. It makes them do and say and think silly, stupid, dangerous things that they would otherwise scoff at. It makes them have sex in the mornings before they've brushed their teeth, it makes them hold hands when it's so cold out that their fingers become little blue flesh-cicles, and it makes them hate each other sometimes in that way that you can only ever hate someone who you want to be with forever and ever.

And, apparently, it makes Remus Lupin leave.

"Tonks, I know you know this is best. You deserve someone..."

"Someone I don't want?"

"Someone better."

"What if I don't want someone better? Or worse, or younger, or older, or charming and rich and handsome? What if I want you, you big idiot?"

He's staring at the floor now, biting his lip so hard she wants to tease that he ought to be careful, because if he bites it off she's going to be rather upset, having grown rather attached to it.

But she doesn't.

"Tonks, please understand."

The finality of this sentence makes Tonks' blood run cold and her heart miss a beat.

It's an accident, when her head falls forward into her hands and her hair falls limp and her eyes revert to their natural brown

It's an accident, when Remus feels his hands make contact with her shoulders. He doesn't mean to be pulling her off the bed, holding her, wrapping her up in him. He shouldn't. It's not right. He can't be the source of hurt and comfort, but god does he want to be.

She doesn't know how pretty she is, this funny little girl he's taken a liking to. She wears silly clothes and silly hair and would crack his jaw for saying it, but Remus has always thought she was prettiest in the mornings—as herself. Soft brown hair, deep brown eyes, delicate, almost translucent skin. And she looks that way now, which is why Remus simply can't help himself touching her.

But it's more than that. It's also the fact that despite the entirely reasonable argument he has just put forth in attempting to convince her (and himself) that this is for the best and for her own good and all that bollocks, the idea of walking out of this room makes Remus slightly ill. It's everything to do with that when he threads his hands through her hair, lifts her face up to meet his and, without meaning to, brings their lips together before he's had a chance to talk himself out of it.

Their mouths meet, and, just as always, Remus feels his whole world rearrange. Tonks' hands slide up his back and now she's holding him, keeping him there. It's strange to think she could believe for a second that there's anywhere else he'd rather be, or that there's anyone else he'd rather her be with. In fact, the thought of her touching, holding, loving someone else, anyone else, ignites a fire in Remus of a different nature. It makes him want to break things and shout and behave in a rather un-Remus-like manner. But he won't. And she will move on to better men—men that can take care of her and give her a family and not burden her with all the things he would thrust upon her. And Remus knows he will see her one day, happy and holding on to someone else, and he will smile, because she is the only person he has ever loved enough to want to lose.

It's this thought that drives him when he lowers her onto the bed—the thought of facing her and her charming boyfriend or fiancé or husband, and smiling, that makes him pull her shirt over her head and categorically ignore what has to happen in the morning.

This. This. Only this. Now. Last. The end. Only. This.

Words flash through her mind like machinegun fire, maddening and distracting. Though nothing could truly distract her from the lips on her collarbone, the long, shaking fingers fumbling with the clasp of her bra, the rough, strong hands sliding over her ribcage and breasts.

It's quite amazing, this. That they can do something so banal and simple, something that's been done by nearly every man and woman in history, and make it feel like it's just for them. Make it feel like they're inventing it.

Tonks bites down on his shoulder to keep the sound from escaping her mouth. Now he has his shirt off and her denims are being peeled away like a cocoon, beneath which her skin feels pink and new. Remus is looking at her like she's a complicated curse he can't unravel, and Tonks knows she's looking at him like I don't want you to go and I don't know what I'll do without you, and about a hundred other things she'd never ever say—but there they are, none the less, hanging between them, the invisible threads tying them together, though she knows they will be severed by the sunrise.

There are breathing sounds and sighing sounds, but neither of them speaks. Tonks opens her mouth, closes it, and opens it again, hoping that miraculous words will pour out on their own if she wants hard enough, words that would burn away the circumstances occluding the situation and leave the bare bones – charred and ashen but strong and unbreakable, a still-standing structure of undeniable rightness. But the words clot and stick in her throat, and Remus issues a soft shhh sound as he wraps his hand around the nape of her neck and pulls her mouth against his.

She fumbles with his trousers, her fingers refusing to cooperate, until finally Remus reaches down and undoes the buttons with one deft hand. Normally, she'd say something cheeky about Remus and his long, nimble fingers, knowing full well what they can do, but this time it's not funny. This time, it just makes her breath catch for a moment as she pushes his trousers down past his hips and watches as Remus kicks them away to join the linens at the end of the bed.

Slowly, slowly, like she is a dangerous thing, he hooks two fingers in the waist of her knickers and drags them down her legs in one smooth motion. Tonks remembers how she laughed the first time he did this, and how moments later she started to wonder exactly how much practice he'd had at it and whether she should be concerned, but all this was before he did what he is doing just now.

His hands, his large, graceful, hardened hands, slide down her torso, lingering on the scar beneath her bellybutton, the one she got when she fell on a fence during her Auror training. It is the mark that she considers most representative of her life, of what she is and what she has become. Almost instinctively, her fingers find the jagged, raised mark on his shoulder, the imprint of teeth that made him who he is.

The palm of his hand comes to rest between her legs, pressing against her softly and then firmly, and her hips press back. Precise fingers skim along the folds of her flesh as his mouth moves hotly against her breast, stubble burning the delicate skin wonderfully.

After a moment, there is a pause, and then one long finger presses into her, and Tonks exhales loudly. The sensation starts in her groin and spreads upwards – warming her stomach and her chest, making her lungs feel tight – and downwards so that her thighs tense and her knees bend automatically. She pushes down, urging him on, though he needs no encouragement, and he sinks a second digit into her body so that she feels split open and exposed, anchored by the friction and the heat.

Remus, she whispers, and he silences her again, his lips chapped and his kisses hard.

The fact that he can make her make these sounds, move this way, is something Remus can never quite believe. Perhaps that is why he feels the need to do it so often, an effort to convince himself. Suddenly, the thought of never doing this again arises, but Remus forces it away, banishing it like a bad dream of his own making. Her body twitches and reacts to his touch like a marionette as he moves his fingers inside her, memorizing the warm, wet pressure, and the way she stops breathing when he lets his thumb press just there.

But she is never docile, never content, and she slides suddenly out from under him and pushes him roughly onto the bed. The scars that mar his skin, the thin and thick lines from bad and worse nights, have always made Remus feel monstrous. The fact that he cannot remember their making leaves him feeling violated, vulnerable in a way that he cannot stand. But Tonks, with her small fingers and her absolute refusal to let a thing just bloody drop, damn it, insisted on learning them, on tracing them in the cool dawn light the first time they were together. Every time since then, she has touched and kissed them as though they are beautiful, and not grotesque reminders of the creature she is with. Her hands on his skin are almost enough to make him believe it, too.

Laid out, arms pinned to his sides by her uncommon strength, Remus realizes he is at her mercy. Physically, he could overpower her, but somehow he knows she'd never stand for it. And so he lies still while her hand moves between them, making his hips twitch involuntarily and his eyes slam shut. Without warning, she moves on top of him, and in one burning, consuming motion, he feels himself slide into her, and he bites his lip.

They are a wondrous fluke -- that their bodies fit like this, that their legs and arms twist together just so. Tonks shuts her eyes as she lowers her hips, trying to memorize the way this feels, the delicate balance between not enough and too much to bear. It wasn't like this before, with other men, boys. It was never enough and then she just wanted them to stop and leave because it was all so awkward and stilted, and she felt like an actress, a bad one. But with Remus, his hands hold her hands, and his eyes hold her eyes, and it should be awkward, but it isn't. It's frightening and beautiful. It is being alive, and it is a great and terrible thing.

His mouth, hot and stubbly, traces lines and patterns on her neck, her shoulders. When their mouths find one another again, it is a frantic clash of tongues and teeth, brutal and amazing, because it is always amazing, and also because it will never be amazing again.

Their hips move in tandem, colliding and falling apart like pieces of some beautiful machine, and Tonks feels like there is nothing that could disassemble them, except for their own fear. But the next moment she can't think at all, and Remus has her at the neck and at the small of her back, and he rolls her over onto the bed, and then they are moving again.

He says things into her skin, things he would never say to the air, because the air is dangerous, and it can drift out of the room and carry away all the secrets it is told. He says I'm going to die without you and please don't ever forgive me and I love you like life. And her skin absorbs these deadly things, and they spread across her body, his whispers absorbed in her flesh, siphoning away the poison in his bones.

Tonks lets out a little sound, small and shrill, like a moan and a cry, and the muscles in her stomach twitch. Nerve endings he didn't know existed are alight, like their love is fire, and he knows he will burn to save her. Their hips thrust sharply, and Remus feels her body tighten and shiver, her head falling back against the pillow, the small muscles of her throat moving as she breathes his name -- Remus, I, and please, and Remus again, but louder. She bites her lip, so he bites her lip, and her neck and her shoulder-blade, leaving soft-blue bruises and marks, silent reminders so that she can't forget him as quickly as she should. It's spiteful and wrong, but he can't help it. He needs her to be his, to claim her, to possess her bright heat and her unexpected strength, because he doesn't think he's strong enough to exist without her.

He lived without this, once. He lived and loved and was whole all alone, but he was young and strong, then. He was brave and hopeful and determined. But there has been too much tragedy, too many losses, and now he doesn't know how to stand up without her. He can't remember how, or, perhaps, he is simply no longer able.

Like lighting, he comes. Remus's whole body feels dead and alive and a part of her, parasitic, dependent and happy. Her body beneath him shakes, trembles and her mouth finds the side of his face, hot and soft. With one last, shattered, broken thrust he collapses, her body beneath his humming with afterglow. Tonks's fingernails run smooth tracks along the nape of his neck, and he shivers.

"Here, here, here," she whispers, sliding from beneath him.

Without thinking, Remus wraps himself around her, swallows her body with his own. He forgets sometimes that she is a small and can be broken, because she seems so big, so much larger than himself. Her hands wrap around his neck, and were she anyone else, he would think she were clinging desperately, except he knows (even if she does not) that she does not need him. And that makes leaving all the more difficult.

In the crystal stillness that settles over them, he knows, in sharp pains down his spine, that he is right. He knows that he cannot let her be dragged down with him into the murky water of his own misfortune, no matter how the earth around him crumbles, no matter how the sky above crushes him into nothing. It doesn't matter. He is old and jaded, and believes only in the fight, not the promise of victory. He had his chance at happiness and it was lost to suspicion and poor timing. But she is young and full of hope like poison, and he cannot be the one to dispell her delusion.

Tonks can feel him thinking in the tense muscles of his neck. His brain, always moving, shifting, churning, even in the wake of what has passed between them, brilliant man. But there, it's hiding in the shadows of his face, and it makes Tonks's heart sink. It's the coiled, readiness to slip out quietly the moment she is asleep. Not a malicious escape, but a kind one, he probably imagines. Suddenly, Tonks doesn't feel very kind.

"Go, if you're going to," she says without thinking.

He doesn't move, but his breathing stills and his muscles tighten.

"I'm not going to make this easy for you. If you're going to leave, you're not going to do it in the dead of night, like some one-night stand."

He sits up, his hair tousled and his eyes burning.

"Don't ever, ever say that, Tonks."

She snorts. It's cruel, she realises, but she can't help it. Some bitter part of her wants to hurt him and watch him limp out the door, wounded and nursing his injuries.

"Fine, call it what you want. Just go."

Without looking at her, he slips his shirt back on and says, "I'm glad you're handling this so well."

Without warning, the anger leaves her in a rush of air, and she feels deflated.

"Remus."

He's pulling on his trousers, buttoning them and staring at the floor.

"Remus," she says again, quieter than before.

He looks at her, and she feels her heart fall apart.

"Tonks just—" And he stops. At once, they both fall together, and it's only then that Tonks realises she's still naked, as his starchy shirt and rough denims press against her skin. At the delicate junction of their mouths, they breathe together, the air between them muggy and damp.

It feels like steeling himself for a fall, his teeth gritted and his eyes shut tight as he pulls away. Her body, exposed in the dark room, seems to wither a little, but the next moment he's sure he imagined it. But there is no imagining the way he fades, sickens in his soul. There is no pretending that this doesn't hurt.

He wants to say goodbye. He wants to say forget me and you'll be fine and I'll hate you for it. He says her name, instead, over and over. And he'll always remember that she does not cry, at least until he closes the door behind him.