This chapter has been a massive struggle to write. I hope it's worth it.

Q

He didn't plan for this to happen, but it's too late. She's on her floor with her oversized yellow t-shirt tugged up to her ribcage, and he's half-leaning, half-lying over her, propped up on his elbows. His shirt's unbuttoned halfway down his sternum. They're both drunk, though it's only at this exact moment that Remus realises quite how drunk he is. From the bottom of his eye he can see Tonks' chest rising and falling rapidly, and he can feel his own heart palpitating too.

This wasn't supposed to happen. He planned to go back to his cottage tonight after staying at Grimmauld Place for a few days, and Dora was meant to come round to eat dinner. He was planning on cooking a curry. But when Remus had got home this morning, he'd found that the water pipe had burst and there were puddles across the ground floor. This cottage is falling apart- he'll have to make a decision soon about if he's going to stay and fix it up, find another house, or live with Sirius full-time. Sirius has been paying Remus' rent for months and insists that he wants to do so, though Remus knows it'd be fairer if he saved Sirius the trouble and moved in at Grimmauld Place permanently. It'd be easier for Order business too, and he could keep Sirius company. The only downside would be that he wouldn't have his own place to invite Dora over to. He loves it when she Floos here after work and stays for the evening, and it wouldn't be the same at Grimmauld Place. There's her flat, of course, but if Remus kept going there all the time it'd be another way of inconveniencing and imposing on her.

He cleaned up the water dribbling across his floor, but the pipe would take longer to investigate. Remus took the ingredients from his fridge and apparated to Grimmauld Place to cook the curry in Sirius' kitchen. Sirius had sat at the table, rocking back on his chair-legs and half-teasing half-sneering at Remus for being a house-husband. This, Remus reckons, is another item on the list of Reasons Not To Move In At Grimmauld Place (although as well as providing Remus' rent, Padfoot also pays for his food. To be able to afford decent food to cook not only for himself, but for someone else, feels a novelty. He suspects Dora knows it too, because she's always unusually serious when she thanks him for making meals). He sent a patronus to Tonks explaining what had happened to his cottage, then apparated to her flat carrying the curry in a box. She was home from work already, still wearing her Auror robes and mixing herself a glass of Coke with some sort of bottled spirit.

"Long day?" he'd asked, as she came over to kiss him hello.

"Not as bad as yours,"

"It's fine. I'll fix the pipe in the morning,"

She pecked his jaw (she often went in for a couple of extra kisses after the first, and Remus had managed to stop being surprised about it by now). "You're so practical,"

Remus chuckled dryly. "Practical"- probably the best compliment he was worth.

"I mean it," Tonks maintained, "You cook, you fix stuff,"

"Yes, Sirius suggested I'd find good work as a house-elf,"

"Don't reckon a pillow case would suit you, though. D'you want one of these?" she invited, gesturing to the glass.

"I don't much like Coke,"

"Shot, then?" she asked, holding up the glass bottle. Remus read the label- Sierra Tequila.

"I haven't drunk tequila in years," he warned.

"But you get smashed with Sirius,"

"Not smashed," Remus corrected, which was true. Tonks knew that Molly overplayed Sirius' drinking. Though when Dora raised a sceptical eyebrow at him, Remus couldn't help but laugh.

"Alright," he conceded, slightly surprised at himself. One of the most puzzling and thrilling parts of all this wasn't it wasn't just Dora herself who surprised him, it was the version of himself he was when around her.

"You deserve it," Tonks recommended, splashing liquid into the glass. She handed it to him "Cheers,"

"To what?"

"Dunno. To you and me. Us,"

"Us," he'd repeated in a mutter. They were an us now. Him and her. Them. Us. Remus downed the shot before Tonks had time to notice how embarrassed he was. The liquid was tartly hot and it made his throat burnt and his eyes water.

"God," he croaked, spluttering.

"It's not that bad," Tonks scoffed.

"Says the woman who can't finish a pint of beer,"

"That's 'cos beer's disgusting,"

Bickering cheerfully, she got plates out (almost all of hers were chipped) and Remus ladled the curry on to it. They ate sitting opposite each other at the table- Remus always sat on this side, facing the window and the fridge. It was becoming his place, as if he belonged here.

After dinner, they migrated over to the sofa in her living room. Tonks hung her Auror robes up and kicked off her Converse to put her feet in his lap. Remus was still getting used to being touched so much, especially in those casually intimate ways. Feet on his lap, hand grabbing his wrist when she was eager to tell him news, a fist lightly punching his arm when he teased or annoyed her- in some ways, that sort of contact was more bemusing than kissing.

The bottle of tequila came too, and Remus would like to claim that Dora had badgered and needled and flirted him into drinking as much as he has by now. In truth, he'd needed no persuading- or if he had, the persuasion had been so enjoyable that he hadn't noticed it. Hardly anything was more satisfying than watching and listening to his girlfriend talk, observing the ways she moved and hearing about her day. He pretended that the tequila tasted worse than it did, which made her snigger. Remus loved kissing her when she laughed, feeling her smile against his. The alcohol made him feel a little less hesitant, especially as Tonks twined her fingers in his hair, curled her tongue around his ear, and breathed that she'd been looking forward to this all day.

"I couldn't stop thinking about you at work. You make it impossible concentrate, you know that?"

From where Remus was sitting, she appeared to be concentrating perfectly well on what she was doing to his ears.

Tonks slid her feet off his lap and knelt up on the sofa beside him, kissed him on the mouth once more, then plunged her hand into his outside jacket pocket. She and groped around in there, pulling out a couple of his cracked Biros. She looked at them curiously for a moment, clicked them, then put them back in Remus' pocket. Then she investigated the pocket on the other side, withdrawing a crumpled chocolate wrapper and a note she'd slipped into his hand at the last Order meeting: See you upstairs? D Xx. She signed herself to him as D nowadays, not T.

Her hands grazed over his chest as she searched inside his jacket's inside breast pocket. That light, almost-touch was something else to get used to, and something else he absolutely loved. Remus had the urge to fidget, but he also wanted to stay completely still so she'd keep touching him that way. Dora fished the keyring out of his pocket and traced her finger thoughtfully around the shape of every key. Her face was close enough to kiss, though she was engrossed in studying his keys and didn't look at him. Somehow this was even more alluring. Next, Tonks took his wallet from his inside pocket and started filing through his discount cards, asking which shops they were for and what he bought there. His notebook was next, and although Remus' jacket notebook only contained trivial memos like shopping lists and dates of birthdays, he knew he should have felt appalled. It was invasive and entitled of her to start poking through his jacket while he was still wearing it, searching through his possessions and his private notes. Instead of feeling annoyed and insulted however, Remus didn't think he'd ever found anybody more attractive. She was bewildering and mesmerising. She was asking about his keys, wallet and notebook as if she was actually curious, as if she truly cared. She did care.

"I love you," Remus blurted. He realised he'd definitely had too much to drink now- the first couple of times he'd said those words to her it had been rehearsed, apprehensive, almost solemn. Now he was blabbing it out without thinking.

"I love you," she beamed, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

"What about you? Do you have a Scribbulus discount card?"

Dora burst into chortles. "You have a way with words, you do,"

Remus loves making her laugh, because she makes him laugh all the time. He frequently makes her life complicated and inconvenient (Dora never says this, though it's patently true), so he feels better when he can make her happy, even only for a moment. Making her laugh offers her a little in return for all the effort.

"Another drink?" he suggested.

"Thought you didn't like the taste?"

Remus shrugged and twigged an eyebrow.

"Knew I'd change your mind," Tonks gloated. She summoned the bottle and sloshed them both another glass.

"To Scribbulus discount cards," Remus said, and she giggled again. They drank the shots (how many was that now? He'd lost track), and then Dora slid off the sofa to flick through her cassettes, chose one of them that Remus hadn't previously found insufferable (Auqamental by the Willowed Dillons), slotted it into her tape machine and whacked Play.

Then she asked, "Wanna play a game?"

"Yes," he grinned. How could he have said no?

"Okay, hang on,"

Dora darted to the kitchen and returned a moment later carrying a salt shaker and plastic box. "D'you know what these are for?"

"Cocktails?"

She liked cocktails, the more artificially-coloured and stupidly-named the better.

"No, it's a game," Dora re-iterated.

"I don't have to do the salt then eat the shot, do I?"

"Don't be daft. It's the salt then the shot. Then the lime," she said, giving him a look of deadpan innocence.

"I'm going to be vomiting in the morning as it is, I don't need to start now," Remus said. This sort of jokily disagreeing with her was the closest to flirting he knows how to get (he also knows that it isn't close to flirting at all).

"Fine, I'll do it first," Dora decided, "Oh, and I lick the salt off you,"

Suddenly this game made perfect sense, and had gone from sounding ridiculous to sounding irresistible….and also anxiety-inducing. It was bizarre how often those two overlapped nowadays.

"Where off me?"

"Your choice," she said with that innocent smile again.

Ideas flicked through Remus' head, but he dismissed them quickly- they'd agreed to stop trying that sort of thing. She'd been fiddling with his collar, so now the top couple of buttons were already undone, and Remus had reached up to unbutton the third. The alcohol had caused his fingers to not co-operate with his brain, so it took a few attempts to get the button out of the hole. Dora was sniggering, so to keep her laughing he tried again on the fourth button down, and bungled it too (slightly on purpose). Remus pushed the shirt away from his neck on the right-hand side. He didn't want her to see what was on the left side if the shirt slipped down to his shoulder. Feeling both titillated and foolish- another peculiar and increasingly common Venn diagram- he picked up the salt shaker. Remus wasn't sure how much salt to use so erred on the side of caution as he tipped it across the side of his neck (her Ministry medical exam was coming up in a few weeks. He didn't want to give her high blood pressure before then). She moved in, pecked his cheekbone, and suckered her lips to his neck. Her tongue flicked across Remus' skin, licking up the salt. Dora liked it when he kissed her neck, and he liked it too because she was ticklish there so he could make her giggle while kissing her. Now, he found himself stifling a snigger, even though he wasn't normally ticklish. Her mouth on his neck made him acutely aware of how warm his skin felt and how hard his pulse was pumping, and It made him acutely aware of how much he was relishing it.

Tonks unstuck her mouth from his skin, picked up the shot glass to down it, slammed the glass on the floor, and shoved the lime into her mouth. She made a face which was half a grin and half a grimace.

"And this game's supposed to be fun?" Remus inquired, amused.

Tonks spat the lime out and fluttered her eyelashes at him. "Didn't you enjoy that?"

"I didn't say that,"

A thought flickered that in the morning he'd cringe at talking to her this way, though now it made him buzz with joy.

"My turn," Dora announced, scrambling off the sofa. She lay on her back on the floor and tugged her t-shirt up to her ribs, revealing her piercing and her pirate ship tattoo and the grid of muscles packed beneath her skin. From the start, he'd been enamoured by the curves and textures that muscles added to her body. Plus, he'd long been amused and baffled by her nonchalant enthusiasm for ink and piercings. At first, Remus had supposed that given her ability to change her appearance, Dora liked to find as any ways to do it as possible. Now he suspects that it's more complicated. Having a body which mutates so frequently must be disorientating and wearisome, even though most of the time she's control of how she changes. Sticking a ring into her navel probably feels like doing something permanent. Given her ability to change her appearance, Tonks likes to find as any ways to do it as possible, though perhaps it's also an addiction. Remus contemplates, sometimes, if she'll ever choose to stop.

Dora shook the salt liberally onto her stomach (she clearly didn't have the same concerns about Remus' blood pressure as he had about hers), some of it sliding tantalisingly into the grooves between her abdominals. She balanced the lime on her neck, and Remus climbed off the sofa onto the carpet. He felt hot, like if he wanted to undo more buttons on his shirt, even though they were undone down to his chest already. Tequila sloshed inside him as he leant over and started to lick the salt off her. The taste of skin, salt and the metal of her piercing was a weird combination. It probably should have been unpleasant, but of course it wasn't. Tonks half-sighed, half-giggled- a dreamy, beautiful sound which Remus couldn't help but feel flattered by. She rubbed hand though his hair. Remus licked up another line of salt and nuzzled her stomach with his nose. Then he'd sat up, picked up the shot glass and downed it, spluttering at the taste. Tonks had cackled and he'd crawled over her to eat the lime off her neck. Which is how they ended up here, with her sprawled on her back and Remus hovering over her. She's looking up at him, giggling and beautiful as the atmosphere shifts from playful to crackling, and thick with lust. Merlin's beard, he wants her. He wants her so much. Thankfully Remus has a good poker face- if he didn't, his mouth would be twisting in indecision about if it should grin or grimace. Plenty of this relationship has been difficult to navigate, though this side has been one of the most discombobulating parts.

The subject had come up much earlier than Remus anticipated, only a couple of weeks after they first got together. He'd gone round to Tonks' flat, but he'd been queasy and lethargic, and she'd had asked if he wanted to go to bed. She'd meant "bed" as in "home", but Remus had misunderstood, thinking that she was talking about going to bed together. He'd been determinedly trying not to think about that for months. Usually Remus was good at keeping his thoughts hidden, but he didn't feel so inscrutable around Tonks anymore. Over Christmas, he'd dismissed it as her being good at seeing through people's masks given her own ability to change her face. However, it became increasingly obvious that the truth was that it was much more to do with Remus' mask not working when he was around her. Had he done something to betray his feelings?

"Of course not," he'd said hurriedly.

"I just thought you looked a bit peaky," Tonks answered. That was when Remus realised that she'd meant go home to his bed because he was ill, not come to bed with her.

Tonks realised too, because she said, "Oh, you thought I meant that,"

"I apologise. I wouldn't dare to presume-"

"You can hold it with the flattery," she'd told him, rolling her eyes. She often did that, though there seemed to be less affection and more impatience in this particular eyeroll.

"Perhaps I should go home now,"

"You looked really startled," Tonks observed.

He definitely needed to practise his giving-nothing-away face.

"You have before, haven't you?" she checked. Now, Remus knows that Padfoot had already told her about some of the stuff they'd got up to as teenagers, though he didn't know that at the time. There have been other people since Sirius, too. Not many (certainly not many women), not for a while, but not zero.

He nodded.

"Okay. Thank God," she'd said, and he'd chuckled in spite of himself.

"Not for a long time," he'd added in a mumble.

"So theoretically, if I was asking you if you wanted to come to bed with me, which I obviously was not," Tonks clarified, "Would that be alright? Not now, but one day?"

"You wouldn't want that," he'd said, because to kiss was one thing, but to sleep with a werewolf was another. Not just disgusting- dangerous. He might lose control and hurt her. That's never happened, before but it could. Werewolves are like that.

"Yes, I would. If I was asking, which I'm not right now,"

"Tonks, you know that I'm-"

"-a werewolf, yeah. And I know what people say about werewolves, and I know that it's bull. It's nothing to do with what you're actually like,"

"I think we should wait," he insisted.

"I agree. I only wanted to know 'cos you looked so freaked out,"

Everything about this freaked had him about, and still does. A woman who knew what he was but still wanted to spend time alone with him, touch him, even touch him closely and kiss him and say sweet and ridiculous things to him. How could be not be perturbed?

"Only when you're ready, okay? And if you're never ready, okay," she'd continued.

Remus nodded. "Okay,"

As excruciating as that conversation had been, Remus hadn't thought much of it, because he expected Tonks to call things between them off after a few weeks. He hoped they could end on good terms, though given that he was a werewolf, he wouldn't be shocked if she wanted never to see him again. But she didn't call it off. They'd stayed together, spent more time together and got closer, emotionally and physically. He told her things he hadn't said aloud before. She told him he was special and cute and funny and worth more than he realised, and there were moments when he believed her. She told him she loved him.

Sirius gave them his father's old study to use for what he called "amorous purposes", though most of Padfoot's hints were usually much crasser. Remus wouldn't have found that so flustering were it not for the fact that he had started to feel more…keen. Well, he'd felt keen all year, but more actively keen as time went on. Dora started wedging her leg between his when they kissed, or slipping her hands into his back pockets, or chucking her top off. Madly, Remus had found himself muttering suggestions, though when she asked if he wanted to go further he didn't know how to answer.

"We could experiment," she suggested. Remus winced.

"Practise, I mean," Tonks had corrected herself, "Only if you want to,"

"Do you?" he answered.

"I asked first," she shot back, "Whatever you're comfortable with it fine, as long as you stop being so bloody evasive,"

"I like you very much, Tonks," he'd murmured. She'd rolled her eyes at him, which Remus knew was entirely deserved. She'd pulled her top back on and the conversation had gone round in circles, until eventually Remus had admitted that he wouldn't mind practising, if she didn't mind either. They'd tried a few times- she'd unbuckle his trousers and use her hand, or they'd manoeuvre around so she could use her mouth. It had been...well, Remus could cite lots of adjectives. Marvelous. Befuddling. Embarrassing. Disquieting. Delightful. Dazing. Elating. When managed to enjoy it, it was wonderful. "Skilled" sounded clinical, but she was, with her mouth and her hands and with...him (why are all the words about sex so horrible? It makes him wince even to think about). He was hopeless, obviously, even though all he was required to do was to was stand and...well, that was a whole other problem. He knew he was supposed to loosen control, but Remus hated not being in total control of himself. Dora kept telling him to relax, but he wasn't good at relaxing, and it was even more difficult when he thought of how sordid and violent this must look. He couldn't repeatedly not ask if she minded, and Dora would ask back, and that set him on edge. He thought, perhaps that he find this more gratifying if he could touch her back, try to give her this kind of pleasure too (well, try to. Women were complicated that way). If they went to bed together, they could kiss and hold each other throughout it all, so he wouldn't be embarassedly watching Dora do something to him. It could be something they did together.

The idea of asking her, though, was mortifying to the point of unbearable. The best he could do was mumble if she wanted anything back, and Tonks repeatedly maintained that it was fine. Remus would worry, then, that she didn't want him touching her. Nobody could blame her- he was a werewolf. But she'd pull her top off, or move his hands to her waist or her hips while they kissed deeply. How could that not be flummoxing?

All this meant that practising often ended awkwardly and unsatisfactorily. After yet another attempt that went that way, Tonks had sighed, "Is this working?"

Remus had squirmed.

"Why don't we stop for a bit?" she suggested wearily, "Let's not put pressure on this, yeah?"

"Whatever you want,"

"No, whatever you want. But you're not going to tell me, so let's put it to bed," she huffed. Then she realised what she'd muttered, "You know what I mean,"

Remus nearly pointed out the Freudian slip, though stopped when he realised Tonks probably didn't know what it meant or who Freud was. And he certainly wasn't explaining that to his thirteen-years-younger girlfriend.

Stopping trying to be intimate made things easier and less foggying, though alone in bed at night Remus would imagine what it would be like to have her there with him. He'd feel sweaty, tight and restless, and his head was crammed with memories of her face and voice and body and the way she felt to touch. The desire was insane and awful. Remus was used to things feeling wrong and right at the same time, though this rightness and wrongness were at extremes, and they pulled at each other in either direction.

Back on Dora's living room floor, he stares at her, noting uneasily that his body feels heavier than usual. He didn't anticipate ending up here. "Practise" was arranged, organised, discussed. This has happened spontaneously out of having fun together (had she planned it? Probably not, given she knows how twitchy he is. Besides, she isn't calculating like that. Most of her family are Slytherin, but Dora decidedly isn't). That's how this is supposed to happen, how it happens with normal people- with every other man Tonks could and should be spending her time on.

When she'd asked if it was okay and she muttered that he didn't need to touch her back, it was easy to convince himself that she didn't actually want to sleep with him. Though that argument seems much less viable given the loving, hungry way she's gazing at him now, and the way she moves her legs further apart, inviting him to make himself at home between them. She isn't an idiot, and she knows what she's letting herself in for, and she wants him anyway. She's shown him that many times. She said only when he's ready, and he's ready now. He could ask her: Will you come to bed with me? I want you. I'm in love with you and I always will be. It needn't be mortifying, and frankly Remus is drunk enough to want to batter through the mortification. He's going to say it, then. And if she says yes, do it. That stops him. The words die in Remus' throat, because tonight's been fun. He made her guffaw about the burst pipe and by pretending he didn't like the spirits. She liked the curry he cooked. She riffled though the stuff in his pockets and interrogated him about it. They drank shots. They hadn't talked about anything deep or important- they'd chatted and bickered about pointless topics. Remus hadn't mentioned being a werewolf at all. He spontaneously told her he loves her. Everything tonight's been normal, calm, and happy. It won't be any of those if he asks to sleep with her. The evening will become tense, fumbly and stressful, and they'll go around in circles. The closeness of sex would be lovely, but there's also a pressure to it, a performance element, and his performance will surely be disappointing. Another way to let her down, another part of being a boyfriend which he'll be hopeless at. Tonight Remus hasn't felt like a hopeless boyfriend, or a disappointment. And he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to ruin it.

Remus rolls off her and onto his back. He swallows down the taste of salt and tequila, which now feels tart and potent. He has the urge to gulp some deep breaths, though he doesn't want to sound like he's sighing in relief. He isn't sure if he is relieved or not.

"You didn't eat the lime," accuses Dora unexpectedly. Her hand darts out above Remus' face, holding the lime out. She isn't making him eat it off her, which he can tell is her way of saying that she doesn't mind. Merlin's beard, she's earnt that Hufflepuff patience. She's the most understanding girlfriend anybody could imagine, and it isn't fair to continue messing her about like this. The indecision's got to stop, Remus tells himself. He can't keep leading her on then changing his mind. Next time, then. Next time, he'll ask her to bed to sleep with him properly, if she still wants to. To plan it will suck out the spontaneity which has made tonight so enjoyable, but it'll have to be that way, because if he truly loves her he's got to stop this hornswoggling. Guilt and nerves and self-disgust rattle down Remus' spine, so he distracts himself by grabbing the lime and stuffing it into his mouth. Dora crawls to her feet and holds her hand out to help him up, and when he's standing in front of her all Remus can think is how staggeringly beautiful she is. She's got the most lively, fierce dark eyes that always want to look into his, and her skin looks lovely across the bones of her face. He wants badly to kiss her again….but that would send yet more mixed messages. She probably feels even more bemused and buffeted by this than he does.

Next time, Remus promises himself, taking the lime from his mouth, squeezing her hand, and offering her a small, apologetic smile. Next time.


Thanks for your time. I'll be taking another short break to work on some other stuff- please check out my other works. Stay safe x.