He is already waiting in the bed when Remus enters the room, his lithe form sprawled across the vibrant red sheets. Those sheets are the color of a rich muggle kid's first car, the kind that were always driven too fast; they are the color of a Knockturn-Alley whore's lipstick; those sheets, are the color of sin. They bothered Remus, always had, and he remembers with a sad smile the fight he had started the night Sirius brought them home.

Sirius had been younger then, they both had, and he came in from the storm shaking his hair out in the hall much like the canine he truly was at heart. When he had pulled them from the bag Remus had ranted and raved while Sirius calmly said the few necessary spells and inspected to make sure the sheets were on tight.

He had grabbed Remus by his hair, which even at that age had been peppered with a considerable amount of gray, and tossed him onto the bed. Onto those sheets. That night they didn't make love, they rutted. Fast and hard like the animals they both were, the silence only punctuated by grunts and growls and the final snarl as they both came. That had been the first time they fucked without talking.

They never talked now. Remus would come to this room, and find his lover waiting eagerly. He would run his fingers through the long black hair, would place tender kisses across the once-tanned brow and nose, would gently stroke his hands up sides and over ribs and down the fuzz covered stomach until the figure under him was arching his back and pleading.

He was always gentle now. Before he had let the wolf take over, he had ravished and taken and claimed but now...Now he worshiped his partner. He murmured nonsensically as he spread the oil, as he pushed past the tight ring of muscle, but for all the half-whispered endearments he never really spoke.

Remus was still whispering as he leaned down to kiss the other's petal soft lips, which were open and panting. He paused to feel the warm breath pouring over his face, but the smell was wrong and the breaths too hitched, so he kissed the mouth to make the panting stop. He felt a tongue pushing his lips, demanding to be let in, and remembered a time when he would have snarled at such an open challenge to his dominance, but now he allowed it. He would have allowed anything for these times.

The muscles around him begin to clench and pull, trying sucking his release from him but he is fighting for control. Control which lasts all of five seconds. He comes, tumbling over the edge and after he is emptied of everything he has to give, he pulls out and collapses. Remus rolls to his side, back to the trembling figure beside him, not wanting to see that horrible moment when the long black strands would shorten to bubblegum pink. He feels the weight shift, and the door shut, and knows that she is gone.

Back in her room Tonks falls to her knees and sobs. It is pathetic, she knows it is, but if this is what it takes to get Remus to see her, to touch her and love her, then she will be his substitute.