Eighth Secret

He has been avoiding her for weeks, it feels like, even though it can't have been more than a few days. A few days since that kiss, and everything has changed, but everything is still, still the same.

She too has been avoiding him, she knows, subconsciously turning the other way when she hears him enter the hallway, flickering her eyes away whenever his twitch towards her. But she still flushes to the roots of her blue and black streaked hair whenever she is in the same room as him.

"I'm going out."

The fact that someone has spoken to her slowly registers in her brain as she sits reading a book on the Dark Arts in the library at 12 Grimmault Place. That voice, she knows that voi—Remus. The book falls off her lap as her numbed fingers lose their purchase in surprise. She looks at it, lying carelessly on the floor, with surprise and a bit of guilt because she knows how much he hates seeing anyone hurt books, and so she quickly kneels on the ground to pick it up and manages to bang her head on the coffee table when she is getting back up and spill most of the contents of her mug of tea.

"Oh—bugger!" she sighs in frustration, then climbs back onto the sofa. Remus has been standing still in the doorway, looking at her with a bizarre expression on his face that can be disgust or amusement. She isn't sure whether she would be terribly delighted with either one.

"Out?" she repeats stupidly. After all, she should be allowed this moment of stupidity. It is the first time he has spoken to her since their kiss and since she ran away from him. It was his own fault, she thinks savagely.

"Out," he answers patiently, as he would to a child, and takes a few steps into the room, careful to look at anything but her. In the better lighting of the room, he appears tired and worn and rather disheartened, but she hardens her heart against him. She isn't the one who didn't answer, full moon or no. If he thinks he can use his sad, gorgeous brown eyes and the tired lines around his thoroughly kissable mouth to guilt her into feeling bad for him because it was only a few days after the full moon, and he looked so positively edible, and really, it was indecent for any man to have such sinful looking lips, he has another thing coming.

"You look terrible." Damn it all! Hasn't she just said she wasn't going to care?

The corners of his mouth twist up a bit into a wry sort of smile. "Thanks," he says softly. Then he blinks a few times and says rather stiffly, "Arthur and I are going out this evening. Now, really."

"Oh. That kind of out." He inclines his head a little. "Well." She looks down at her tightly clenched fingers and sees how deceptively quiet they look. Perhaps after all, even though he's going out out, on a mission out, with Arthur, she can do this. "Don't let me keep you," she finally settles on and feels rather proud of herself because of how calm her voice sounds.

There is a pause, and she is almost certain that he must have left, even though she hasn't heard his footsteps at all. "N'dora . . ." His voice is almost but not quite a whisper, husky and hoarse, and she shivers from the sound of it. Right. Definitely not gone yet. It is probably best, she worries, that she not look up, because then she will see those bottomless golden eyes and his sexily touseled hair, threaded with grey, and—

"N'dora, won't you at least say goodbye to me?"

At this she does look at him, and he does look just that good, and suddenly as he moves hesitantly towards the couch and her, she finds herself hurtling into his arms, burrowing her head in the juncture between his neck and his shoulders and just breathing, breathing. He smells like Remus, and she can't, for her life, think of anything as arousing as that in the world.

They are kissing now, furiously, because he had nuzzled his way up the line of her jaw towards her mouth, and everything around her is on fire. Possibly he pushed her back onto the couch, or she grabbed his robes and pulled him down on top of her, but she can't remember which one. All that matters are the lines of flames he traces across her body with his slender hands, the possessive thrusts of his tongue into her mouth, the pressure of his hips against hers. The way they are mauling each other is positively indecent, she is sure, a jumble of moans and kisses and frantic groping that feels so good it ought to be illegal, probably is illegal, and is that the sound of someone clearing his throat?

Remus has already disentangled his mouth and tongue from hers, and she feels lifeless and empty. His entire body flushes with heat that she can feel, not just see. "Oh, erm . . . hallo, Arthur."

She can't see Arthur over the arm of the sofa, which is probably just as well, because she doesn't know how she will ever be able to face him as it is. But he sounds amused rather than appalled to find them in their current—predicament—and merely says mildly, "You know, I hear they have doors with locks on them for these sorts of things."

Remus looks down, abashed, and she takes the opportunity to run her hand down the slim line of his chest because Arthur can't see it from where he's standing, and his abashed look turns into a glare that is so tinged with desire that she wants to throw Arthur out by the scruff of his neck and get back to much more interesting things.

"I was thinking of leaving in about thirty minutes. Do you think you'll be ready by then?" he asks in an admirably straight tone.

"I can be ready now," Remus says, making an effort to climb off of her, but Arthur interrupts.

"Sometimes . . . there are more important things. Half an hour will be fine." And then he leaves and closes the door with a click, and they can hear him performing a locking spell on the other side.

"That was embarrassing," Tonks says. Her hair is pink and short and spiky, as it always turns when she is extremely mortified.

Remus runs a hand through it thoughtfully. "Cute hair," he says. There is a pause, and then he says, about the intrusion, "Could have been worse though. Maybe we should talk . . . ?"

"Or maybe we shouldn't," she counters, drawing his mouth back to hers by grasping the lapels of his shirt.

"Mmm," he agrees.