Please note: This chapter is not suitable for diabetics due to overload of syrup, sugar and schmaltz.
Madness
He was married now. He had not only attended a wedding, but his wedding, to the most glorious person on the planet. It hadn't been perfect- how could it have been?- but yesterday when she came home (their home. She had given him her home and made it theirs) he'd felt a breath-taking sense of relief that she was in the room again. Elation that he could spend more time with her. Nothing else was important. When Remus rushed over and kissed her, it didn't just feel pleasant and comforting and that remarkable blend of exhilarating and relaxing- it felt right. As if their mouths were meant for touching, and as if this was what he was always supposed to be doing. It hadn't felt like that before. Nothing had felt like this before. It was so right that Remus didn't even feel wrong himself. Was this what marriage was meant to be? He'd long believed that married people gushing that their relationship had changed after a wedding was romantic claptrap, but this...whether or not it was because he and Tonks had married, this felt special. Phenomenal, in the literal sense that it was a phenomenon.
Remus lifted her, and Tonks draped her legs tightly around his waist, kissing his neck as he carried her to the bedroom. He made love to her like he didn't know he could. Sex had felt different since their engagement, but Remus had felt apprehensive (amongst all the other things to feel apprehensive for) about the first time after they were married. The act of consummation. He knew Tonks would have spluttered and rolled her eyes at his attempts at being chivalrous, and probably called it old-fashioned codswallop. But it was important to him to make it right for her. All the more so given how difficult that part of being in love had always been, and how much patience he'd forced her to have. Though in the moment, when he slung her onto the bed and tugged her clothes and breathed how beautiful she was, none of that mattered. This wasn't a test or a performance. This was just Remus and his wife in their bed, where he was safe and cosy, and where they could be alone and be close. That was all that mattered.
Afterwards, Dora ordered pizza for them (ordering takeaways was, she claimed, the main reason she possessed a Muggle telephone) and when the flat doorbell buzzed she threw on his shirt and her pyjama shorts to answer the door. Remus felt perturbed by that. Possessive. He didn't want the pizza delivery boy seeing her half-dressed. Usually Remus berated himself for that sort of territorialism, but he found himself confessing it out loud. Tonks beamed back, climbed onto his lap and kissed him deeply, winding her arms around his neck and sliding her tongue into his throat. Their faces tipped upwards, chins bumping. When Dora pulled away she'd made her face cartoonishly craggy and warty.
"Happy now?" she'd asked, and pecked him on the lips once more before zipping off to answer the doorbell (which they could hear the delivery boy thumbing frustratedly, impatient that they'd made him wait).
When she came back, it turned out that his pizza had accidentally had prawns put on it. Remus had barely ever been able to afford prawns and wasn't sure if he liked them. Dora made him try one and the taste made him shudder, so he picked them off his pizza and fed them to her with his fingers. It was all so unlike him, unlike them. As if they were normal. As if he deserved to be happy. They popped open champagne (a Weasley gift), drank it from the bottle and licked it off each other. They cuddled, and he tickled her until she couldn't breathe, and they made sticky, tipsy love (again! Twice in one day- this must be what being Sirius was like). He was mesmerised by their skin beside each others', and the look and feel of their joined hands.
Afterwards, she sighed dreamily and murmured that this was the best she'd ever had.
"Not just with you," she clarified, nibbling his jaw, "Ever,"
Remus knew he shouldn't have cared, probably shouldn't even have believed her- but he did, and he felt a shiver of masculine pride. It must have shown on his face, because she sniggered and kissed his Adam's apple, and toyed with his nipple with her little finger.
They snuggled and whispered for a long time. He'd always been charmed by how Tonks could slip from seriousness to banter, but now he realised that he must be doing it too. After all, conversations were a two-person activity. Tonks made him this person- this sillier, calmer, braver, more fun, more interesting, more alive person. This happier person. Remus suspected that he drifted to sleep first, which was something else that had seldom happened before. He didn't remember Tonks' alarm clock bleating in the morning, though it must have done because when he flickered awake, she wasn't in bed beside him. Remus rolled over, huffing as he woke up, and feeling his muscles whinge as he got out of bed (oh God, was that from all the sex? He chuckled to himself, then laughed harder when he realised that this part of it probably never happened to Sirius). He could hear clattering from the bathroom and, without thinking, walked through the flat towards it. The bathroom door was flung open and Dora was leaning over the sink, brushing her teeth violently. Toothpaste was running down her wrist towards the sleeve of her Auror robes. Remus' heart began to pound itself furiously against his ribcage, as if trying to break out and leap across the room to her. No surprise given that it belonged to her anyway.
Tonks glanced at him (Auror training- he could never observe her for long without her spotting) and flashed him a frothy smile.
"Wotcher!" she chirped, spitting foam.
Remus swallowed. "I wanted to see you," he croaked. That, he realised, was why he'd got out of bed even when his muscles complained, and why, without thinking, he'd gone to the bathroom when he heard her there. Because he couldn't go all day without hearing her voice and words, and having held her and kissed her and have her kiss and hold him back.
Dora beamed. She dropped her toothbrush onto the back rim of the sink, and smeared toothpaste off her chin with her fist. She stepped over to him, rested her elbows on his shoulders and tangled her fingers in his hair.
"It's not even half six and you're out of bed," she murmured, "You really must love me,"
"You know I do,"
She smiled. "I know,"
His lips met hers softly. She tasted of toothpaste and she tasted right. Merlin's beard, this all felt so right.
Dora unsuckered their lips and dropped kisses across his face, breathing mint over him.
Remus pinched the collar of her robes. "I like you wearing these,"
"What, my work stuff?"
"Yes. You look...efficient,"
She snorted with laughter. "Unlike the rest of the time, when you think I look ridiculous?"
"Your words not mine,"
He'd always been attracted to her in her work uniform. Dressed in her Auror robes, Tonks looked capable and official. From back when he'd first heard about her three years ago, he'd been impressed- Mad-Eye Moody's protégé who had entered Auror training straight out of Hogwarts, despite nobody having done so in years and her connection to Bellatrix Lestrange. As Remus met her and became her friend and fell deep in love with her, "impressed by" developed into "in awe of". The Auror gear demonstrated that. They proved how intelligent and hard-working she was. Dora was charmingly cocky about her Metamorphmagus abilities, her clothes and tattoos, and her "I am going to bombard you with questions and anecdotes whether you like it or not" manner of dealing with people. But becoming an Auror was an achievement which had taken years of studying, physical training, exams and fieldwork. She was genuinely proud of it, and the pride showed when she wore that uniform.
Perhaps now they were married, he could ask her to keep wearing them later. Tonks claimed she knew which of her other clothes he liked her most in (Remus hoped she was pulling his leg. He was discreet, wasn't he?) and she got a kick out of wearing them for him. So he reckoned she'd enjoy it if he asked her to wear her Auror uniform that night.
"I like you wearing these, too," she said, tugging at the neck of his pyjama t-shirt, "You know I think you're sexy in the morning,"
Well, that wasn't fair. He always wore pyjamas to bed.
Remus leant down so their foreheads pressed together, making their faces close enough so that hers looked blurry and in double. "I love being your husband,"
"Good, 'cos you're really great at it. My best husband so far," she teased him, then continued giddily, "I can't believe I get to to be married to you,"
He squeezed her hand. "I know. I can't believe it either".
It's been almost a year since I last updated this story, so while I've done my best with this chapter, I suspect my writing is rusty. Thank you for reading and, if you're a long-term reader, thanks for your patience.
