A/N: I've never written Remus/Tonks with past Remus/Sirius before, although I have been shipping it forever. It's one of my favourite tropes, a bisexual Remus, with a Tonks that feels inadequate. I'm sure that not many people at all would ship this, or even read a fic with this sort of shipping, but if you do, I appreciate it, and thank you.
Pairing: Remus/Tonks with past Remus/Sirius (MM/MF)
Rating: M
Genre: Romance/Angst
Dismantle The Sun
The first time Nymphadora Tonks falls in love with Remus Lupin, she is five years old.
He was eighteen, and she inevitably develops a childish, schoolgirl crush on him, as he laughed with Sirius, as he carries her on his shoulder when she scraped her knee. She remembers, even after twenty years, how Remus would walk around in the morning, before the sun, before her mother, and he would walk to the edge of the Tonks' property, no head-turn to look back, only walking in a straight line, and then turning back. It makes her sad, how Remus seemed to be surrounded by friends, but still was terribly lonely.
"Are you sad?" she remembers asking him as only a child could, and she can recall the touch of his smooth hand on her cheek.
"No." he tells her, smiling, his eyes too old for eighteen (she can't imagine him as a child). "I have friends, Dora-child, I have so many friends, I have Sirius."
She wonders, nowadays, why he had separated Sirius from his friends, as if having Sirius was so much more important than having friends.
X
The second time Nymphadora Tonks falls in love with Remus, he kisses her in Grimmauld, there is somewhat of a half-secret in his eyes, something like a drawn, painless secret. She kisses him back, and his terribly large hands touch her back, touch her shoulders, and she feels flying and inexorable. He backs away from her then, and the painlessness in his eyes is now painful and inky, almost burning, and he runs, oh Lord, Remus slammed open the door and ran.
Tonks traces her lips and wonders if she is ugly.
Sometimes, she transforms her nose into a pig snout, or an elephant trunk (she was not trying to attract attention, only deserve the attraction she had attracted), and she knows that this is why Remus probably ran after kissing her. But on other days, she feels beautiful, and black-haired, and it is worse than having the snout, because now she knows of no excuse for Remus to run.
"Why did you run?" Of course she asked him, of course, it was Tonks with the uncanny questions and the blinding eyes. "Was I such a bad kisser?"
"No." Remus looks startled and taken aback, his long fingers tapping on the banister he leaned on. "You were a wonderful kisser, Tonks, if I should say so myself."
"Then why?" She wants, some days, to kiss Remus's lips, and trace his jaw with her tongue. But on other days, she wants to mutilate him with a knife till he confesses why he was so infuriating. "Why would you run away from me?"
"I-" he didn't reply, but he tucked a hair behind her ear, and at least that was something.
Oh, she thinks, cherishing the action, it's got to be enough.
X
The third time Nymphadora Tonks falls in love with Remus Lupin, she saw him kiss Sirius Black in the sanctity of the dinner table in Grimmauld Place. Their kiss was not like the one Tonks and he shared (sweet and loving and brilliant), no, the kiss Remus pressed to Sirius's lips was pert and inky, bright, needy and wanting. Something settles in Tonks' heart and it reminds her of shrapnel. It hurts, like snow would hurt, numbing and dull.
But Sirius pushes Remus away by the shoulders, and Tonks shivers, why would Remus kiss Sirius if Sirius had not wanted it?
"Not now, Remus." She hears Sirius say, quietly, seriously. "Not now. Not ever."
"But why?" Remus murmurs to Sirius, trying to get closer, trying to whisper in his ear, but Sirius steps back.
"But why?" Remus sounds like Tonks, she thinks.
"Because this was something we had in seventh year. It was a phase. A passion, would we say. We were children, Remus." Sirius sounded like the professor, although the only reason he had even passed his NEWTS was because he actually bothered to look at the book once.
"Do children make blood bonds?" Remus asks. "Do children profess that they will never be apart? I waited for you, Sirius!"
I waited for you, Remus.
"I waited for you, for thirteen years." Remus smiles, it was cutting and sardonic, and he stops trying to move closer to Sirius. He sits on the table, his straight nose and hollowed cheeks cutting a sharp profile in the dark. Tonks wants to strangle Sirius, why, when something so beautiful had been laid in front of you, why would you turn away?
"I love you, Remus." Sirius glances at his own feet, wondering if he was truly capable of love, whether the Dementors had sucked it out of him like they had sucked out the marrow of his life.. "But not like that. Never like that, you know that."
He walks out, and Remus sits on the dinner table.
That was when Tonks fell in love with him the third time, reader, when she saw Remus sitting there, the shadows in his cheeks and the darkness in his eyes, the sarcastic smile still at his lips. She could feel the tragedy wisping around him, whistling quietly, sadly, and she wants to hold him in ways that Sirius never would. Remus looks like a man who will do anything for shelter, and Tonks wants to be a sheltering roof, a thick blanket wrapped around Remus as he shivered in the snowstorm that was his life.
Tonks' dreams drift around her and she catches one on her tongue.
It tastes like Remus.
X
The fourth time Nymphadora Tonks falls in love with Remus Lupin, his eyes are wild and his arousal presses against her thigh.
It is a night that was calm and bright and the sky was blindingly full of stars, and it was the night that Sirius Black slipped into the veil, his body claimed by whatever beyond. Sirius Black's heart died with his body, and no matter how much Remus thinks that he had it, Tonks thinks desperately, as she pulls her shirt over her head, it was gone. Something is rising in her like an orchestra, as Remus lowers her on the bed, carries her like a child to the bed, and she watches, her legs open, as he kneels over her, presses his mouth to her sensitivity. She feels as if she is burning down to her bones, as Remus's teeth touch her to the point of weeping his name, she feels like she is ashes to ashes, dust to dust as Remus's tongue tastes her (oh, was he tasting Sirius?) as his fingers entered her.
And when Remus filled her, as he lay pressed over her, she feels like she was daylight, starlight, bright-light, this is home, this is where she belongs, with a wild, grieving Remus thrusting into her from above, the emptiness between her legs filled, and the emptiness in her heart half-filled. It was completely remarkable, every moment of their lovemaking, how Remus's eyes flashed grey and black, how Tonks' back arched when he entered her, how his sweat dripped off his chin, onto hers. She feels as if by making love to him, she has blurred the lines between them, until Tonks and Remus are no longer separate entities, and instead, one soul.
It was bitterly satisfactory, blindingly wonderful when she reached orgasm, tears snaking down her face, and she is crying out his name, she does not know if she is sad or happy, only that she cannot stop weeping, maybe it was the aftereffects of the battle. Remus comes into her with a drawn out exhale, his eyes holding the power of a key soliloquy, he looks as if he were blazing with life, his face glazed, his eyes livid. She forgets whether the groan at his lips was her name.
"Did you like that?" Tonks asks later, when they are no longer breathless.
"Yes." He murmurs, but he looks at the ceiling. It was, after all, the night in which Sirius Black had passed away, but Remus had not wept, he had not even said Sirius's name, not once. Tonks is faced with the searing dullness of that time she saw Remus kiss the unwilling man in the kitchen, and something burns in her, a slow, corroding flame.
"Is this your way of grieving, Remus?" she asks him, tracing his cheekbone with a finger. "Is this how you mourn Sirius, by fucking me?"
"Don't use that word." Remus said, and even as he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling with his endless eyes, his broad shoulders spreading over the sheets, she can still never see the boy he must once have been. She always sees him as old, as a thirty-five year old man, and it saddens her. "I would have made love to you, even if Sirius had not passed. "
"Of course." She says, but she is unsure. Who is Remus Lupin? Is he the man that made love to her with a fire in his groin and brilliance (blinding, blinding light) in his eyes? Or was he the man that kissed Sirius in the kitchen, and was pushed away. Who is Remus Lupin, she wonders furiously, and clutches at his dry, bony hand, rests her head on his muscled, scarred shoulder.
"Of course." She whispers again.
"Tell me poetry, Dora." The childhood nickname sounds like wine rolling off his tongue, she wants him to call her Dora again and again and again, till she tires. "Read me a piece you know."
"I'm not as widely read as you, Remus." Tonks laughed.
Or as much as Sirius.
It's his poetry you wish to hear, isn't it?
"Well, why don't you start?" Remus turns to her, the sparse hair on his bare chest catching the light. With a furious start, Tonks realizes that she wants to make breakfast for him, for the rest of her life, she wants to bring him tea, and kiss him goodnight. "I'll continue it."
"All right." Tonks traces his cheekbone. She knows what she would say would be cruel, but Remus must understand, he must know that she was no Sirius, that Sirius was with the stars of his namesake, cutting a hole in Remus's heart that was too large for Tonks (small, beautiful, petite Tonks) to fill.
"Sop all the clocks, cut off the telephone – " she started, her smile slipping silently off her face.
"Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. "
"Let airplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves."
Remus stops her with a hand to her lips, and it felt rough, it felt as if it belonged at her mouth. But Remus's face was tortured, white, contorted. She wants to cause him physical pain, bite him, punch him, hit him, so that the mental anguish drawn on his face would dissipate, and she wanted to smooth the lines away, oh Lord, but her hands were too soft, too feminine. So she merely looks at him, at his blinding grey eyes that were too dry to grieve, the straight nose she envied and his lips, oh, the lips Sirius had refused, the lips she would die for. He wasn't a pretty man, like Sirius, but he was beautiful like Vulcan was beautiful, rough and crude and long-fingered, and she (her with the odd name and the changing hair, only trying to deserve the attention she had attracted) wants to take him, and fold him away forever.
"You said you would continue." Tonks pushes his hand from her lips, and places a kiss on his chin.
Is it my kiss you want?
"He was my North, my South, my East and West…" when Remus recited the poem, it was painfully honest, like he was drawing out his own internal organs, it sounded raw and real, and it brought more tears to Tonks' eyes (she cried so much over him, she must stop - ), how Remus said the lines, his hoarse voice and lilting almost-Irish accent outlining the words.
"He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong."
"The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood."
"For nothing now can ever come to any good…" he finishes with a sigh, and a barely perceptible tremble of the hand on her face. She wants to shake him, hard, and scream at him to grieve, please, grieve for the man that I'll never become.
"Nothing now can ever come to any good," she whispers, repeating his line.
She bursts into tears.
X
The fifth time Nymphadora Tonks fell in love with Remus Lupin, she was making love to him, again.
But this time, it was different. It was rough, masculine, and she felt so little like Nymphadora Tonks with the purple eyes and pink hair. She wanted to be something else entirely, as Remus's eyes blazed grey ice, and his sinewy arms pushed her into the bed roughly (there was no carrying like a babe this time), and pressed his mouth to hers hard enough to bruise. His erection was insistent, agonizingly aroused as he pulled himself from his pants, and today, feeling like someone else, Tonks does not let him bring his mouth to her clit, he does not let him lick her there, no, today, she makes him stand, as she sat on the bed and took him into her mouth. She runs her tongue over his length, as he shudders, he is so needy today, he came home from the werewolves with anger and hate in the pits of his eyes, he needs someone, and Tonks wants to be the someone. She uses her teeth lightly, and he groans aloud, his hands twisting into her hair.
"Oh –" he begs. "Oh my love, please."
She works at it furiously, kissing him, and she uses her teeth on his aroused shaft again. She needs to deserve his love,
"Oh, please, I love you, I love you –"
Stop calling out for him, Tonks thinks with a tearful desperation, as she takes him out of her mouth, and she stands to meet his lips, letting his arousal touch her bare legs, kissing him with a fever. Stop calling out for Sirius, I'm all you've got, she thinks again, letting a tear slip down her cheek.
And you're all I've got.
With a shaky inhale, she concentrates on the man she had known from childhood, who laughed like a dog, and made jokes like a drunkard. She concentrates on his black hair till it becomes her black hair, curled and oiled. She thinks of his high, chiseled cheekbones till her own match, she thinks of his piercing grey eyes as hers fade from purple to monochrome. She thinks of how his body must be, hard and lean, muscled, abs and biceps, as she changes her curves to fit his, as Sirius's body becomes her. She wills herself to be masculine between her legs, and she does, and she presses into Remus, she is not Nymphadora Tonks anymore.
She thinks of Sirius Black, until she becomes him, a carbon copy of the man.
She kisses Remus hard, pressing him against the wall with her large hands, teeth against teeth, and she fisted his hair. She ground her own arousal into his, let him feel the curve of her abs, the slope of her large, broad shoulders. It's all we've got, she think sadly, this is what I do. She wonders, again, why she was so desperate, why she craved the love of a man who desired a man. Stars burned in her eyes and shame spills on her cheeks, but she kisses Remus, and she thinks, is he happy now?
His eyes shoot open.
They are filled with a primal wolfishness, but there was no anger, rage, no, not even lust. Instead, there was fear. Remus looked afraid, as he pushes the Sirius-lookalike from him, he looks terrified as her pulls up his pants, does up the buttons and gapes at her, bare chested, his eyes wide. He looks like a demon, Tonks thinks with an oddly Sirius-sounding sob, standing there in only jeans and mussed hair, his eyes drinking her in.
"What have you done?" he whispers, and his face crumples. "What have you done, Tonks?"
"Isn't this what you had wanted?" she feels her hair un-lengthening, going back to a mousy brown, she feels her curves returning, her eyes purpling, and she feels unsatisfactorily like herself again. She bites back tears. "Didn't you want Sirius Black?"
"What have you done…?" he whispers again, and he is gone, broken, he has finally let his glass heart shatter as he watched his first love turn into his last. His shoulders are shaking, he is crying openly as she rushes to him, holds him, but she cannot reach too high (Sirius could), she cannot reach to kiss away the tears (Sirius could) and she could only stroke the back of his neck, she could not reach his hair (Sirius could), she could not hold him so tight that he would burn (Sirius could), oh, she feels absolutely brittle and inadequate.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She says it like a mantra, whispering it into his ear as he sinks down to the floor, taking her with him. But somehow, Tonks feels better as he weeps into her shirt. Now, as they sat on the floor, she could reach him, she could reach his eyes to kiss away the tears, she could stroke his soft brown hair and she held him burningly tight. She could do everything Sirius could, she wants to laugh with a tearful desperation.
"I'm sorry –" she says after he is calmed, his face is white and set, oh, he would leave her, and she knows he would.
"Please, never do that." He whispers, he sounds like a child. She had wanted to see him as a child for so long, and now that she was seeing that, she did not want to. She wanted Remus to be thirty six, and old again. "Never. I want to see you when I kiss you, not Sirius."
"But you loved him." Tonks laughed, sardonic. "You loved him, not me."
"I loved Sirius from the sidelines, Tonks." Remus murmured, taking her hand in his. "Much like you loved me."
"But I love you ever so much –" the laughter turned into a sob.
"I did. I loved him, Tonks, he was everything to me. He was all I had, he was a brilliant lover. We made love, once, when we were eighteen."
"It sounds amazing." She envies Sirius his deadness. His martyrdom.
"But it stopped, Tonks. I don't love Sirius any longer. I don't love him, I love you."
"But that day, in the kitchen, you tried to kiss him." She states dully. "You tried to kiss him, and you pushed me away. And then he dies, so you come for me. It's the same story, Remus."
"Oh, you fairy –" Remus exhales, and looks at her, tightening his hold on her hands, their faces so close that she wants to kiss him. "How do you know this?"
"I –"
"It doesn't matter. Tonks, for twelve years, I had waited for Sirius, confident I loved him, confident we would return to the passionate lovers we were. But we didn't. Sirius and I tried, once, but there was nothing, Tonks. But I was desperate. I was childish. I thought –"
he laughs.
"I thought that I still loved him more than anything, and you come along. You, the exact opposite of Sirius, you with your lithe elfin-ness, and your beautiful lips, you come along and I fall in love with you. And I was confused."
"So…you kissed Sirius?" Tonks is the one confused now.
"I kissed him because I thought my feelings for you were a backlash of what I had for him. But there was nothing. That was why I looked so black, so angered that day. Because there was nothing. He felt nothing anymore, and nor did I."
"Remus, for so long, I thought –"
"I do love him, Tonks. But I love you now." He kissed her, finally.
And today –
Today, she feels like Tonks, pink haired, and purple-eyed. She feels like Tonks, who doesn't have to change into a black haired man to be loved.
Oh, this was enough for her, this was all she had ever asked.
X
The first time Remus Lupin fell in love with Nymphadora Tonks could not be pinpointed.
He fell in love with her with a confused passion; he fell in love with her like a car crash, disorienting at first, but painful and blinding later.
The first time Remus Lupin fell in love with Nymphadora Tonks, he kissed Sirius.
He knows its stupid.
But she's a smart girl.
She'll figure it out.
A/N: Please do review this for me, I always appreciate your comments and reviews, especially since this is the first time I have tried writing this pairing of Remus/Tonks, and Remus/Sirius together in one fic. I would honestly be grateful to read any feedback you have, thank you so much.
