Note: CW for wizard drugs, I guess

The murderous beast was in the wood again. It had brought a second - a different sort of beast, with a musk more like the red foxen of the ground than the tall two-legged creatures of the village. The second beast trod softer than the first beast. A gentleness was about it. But it looked at the killer with the affection of a mate, and the wound in the fae's heart dripped with loathing.

The fae chittered, and shining black eyes gleamed from the shadows all around. A rattling like the wind swept across the hands of the trees. The fae of this wood would know these beasts. They would know their hideous deeds. The judgement of the wood would lay over the two human animals like the white death upon the winter ground.

"Remus, you're just panicking. We're fine, you said yourself that you're meant to be a wizard trying to get -"

"If I was trying to get in on the scam, why would I have blown up their - anyway, it's much too fast, much too soon, much too dangerous, this was a fact-finding mission, a foot in the door to -"

"So we've done better than we thought we might! Maybe we can crack this -"

"It's not we. Me. You're not even supposed to be - what have I -"

"Just - calm down, all right, sit down and take a -"

"Get your things," Remus told her, and shut the door to his room in her face. There was a sharp edge on his quiet voice. Tonks huffed an indignant breath.

The Shrike and Marten had been dead empty when they'd burst in the front door, which was a relief: having to obliviate George before they left might have sent Remus even further round the twist. Tonks had argued with him all the way up the stairs.

The only thing in her room was the aluminum pan and the scorched leavings of the bone rejuvenation potion inside it. She wondered what the plan was now: Remus had another 12 hours or so before he'd be safe to apparate, was he planning to walk? Risk summoning the Knight Bus? What a fucking mess.

She sat on the edge of her bed, turning the pan over by its handle. Black flakes of burned potion scattered over her legs. If she'd known charming the boggart away would send him spiraling like this she'd never have done it. She wasn't sure why she'd done it at all: she'd been seized by the imp of the perverse, she supposed. Like when she was a child and her mum would host her Witches' Whist club in the parlor: Tonks would be sat in a corner with her floating puzzlebox and told to keep quiet, so she'd quietly morph her face into one of the old lady Whist players and wait to be noticed with a horrified, satisfying gasp.

Remus knocked twice and opened her door without waiting for a reply.

"Are you ready?"

Tonks froze with the pan in her hand, blinking at him.

"Ready for what, exactly?"

"We're going back across the pasture to the where the wards end and then you're apparating out. Hogsmeade, your parents' - I don't care, wherever you'll be safe. I'm walking to the closest town and -"

"What? No you're not, that's ridiculous, we're in the middle of nowhere -"

"It's ten or twelve miles, I can cover it in a few hours -"

"You've finally found a way to get rid of me, haven't you," Tonks interrupted coldly, throwing the pan across the bed. "Am I ever going to see you again or are you just going to disappear until your corpse turns up in a canal somewhere?"

Remus's back straightened and he was quiet for a moment as he looked at her.

"No, you're probably not going to see me again," he said quietly.

Tears prickled in the corners of Tonk's eyes and she hated them.

"Tell me something," she said raspily, then cleared her throat. "Before we go. It's the absolute least you can do." Remus closed his eyes as if he knew what was coming. Tonks had to force down the knot in her throat to say it: "Are you in love with me, or were you ever?"

Remus's hand came up and covered his mouth. His face was flushed: whether from anger, shame, discomfort or something else Tonks could not tell. He opened his eyes.

"Tonks," he said faintly from behind his hand. "I'm - I'm so sorry, I -"

- a cacophany of clatters and thumps at the window made Tonks jump to her feet and draw her wand in one automatic movement, the spreading devastation in her chest instantly swept away in a bracing flood of adrenaline. Remus came up with a startling quickness and stepped in front of her, his wand also at the ready.

It was a ghost-faced barn owl, clutching a folded white paper in its talons, batting at the closed window with its wide white wings.

Tonks could feel Remus letting out a relieved breath beside her; his whole body seemed to droop with it. He unlatched the window and let the owl in. It dropped the note into his hand and took off in swooping, elegant flight.

Remus unfolded the paper and frowned. After a moment his eyes shifted over to Tonks. He looked alarmed.

"It's for you," he said, sounding like his mouth was dry.

Tonks marched up and snatched the note from his hand.

Ms. Jane Taylor,

That was a cheeky move, my dear. The elder is rather impressed with the sheer stones of it. He'd like to see you both for his weekly private reception tomorrow. I shall meet you at the inn at 4 in the afternoon to show you the way.

Well done.

M

Tonks's face broke into a grin. She looked up at Remus, who was pulling his bottle of muggle pills out of his pocket. "You see? This is -"

"This changes nothing." Remus popped two pills in his mouth, tilting it back as he swallowed before leveling his gaze at her. "At best it'll be a warning, but more likely it's a trap, and I won't allow you -"

"You won't allow me? Fuck off, you're not -"

"I won't allow you to be flattered into walking into danger," Remus spoke over her loudly.

Tonks felt a burning up her esophagus and her eyes narrowed to slits. "I'm a qualified Auror and I've fought my way out of danger that would pucker your arsehole, you dainty fucking prick." Remus's face hardened, but before he could speak again Tonks added, in a voice that was quietly icy: "And after everything you've done, you've got no right to tell me what I'm allowed to do. You do understand that, don't you?"

Remus stared at her for a few seconds with a face of stone. Then he seemed to falter and turned toward the window, bracing his hands on the sill and looking out.

"There's something I need you to understand too," he said. She could faintly see his pained expression reflected on the window glass. "You are a brave, clever, immensely talented Auror. But your impulsivity and recklessness -"

"Okay, steady on, Mad-Eye." She rolled her eyes but he kept going, his pitch rising and speech quickening:

"- and your apparently insatiable desire to amuse yourself by sowing chaos - well, this is hardly the first time it's gotten us into a bind, is it?"

It was true. Once they'd been stationed on a terrace outside the sixth floor of the Dorchester Hotel, swaddled in disillusionment and silencing charms, spying on a clandestine meeting between Lucius Malfoy and the muggle Home Secretary. They'd waited hours, apparently misinformed of the meeting time, and Tonks had gotten so bored she'd changed the Union flag flying above the hotel entrance into the Dead Kennedys logo just to see if anyone would notice. Of course someone had noticed immediately and a crowd had gathered around the front doors to puzzle over it. Remus and Tonks had then watched the Home Secretary walk up Park Lane, register the swarm of people outside, pull up the hood of his anorak and smoothly turn and walk the other way. Malfoy had waited in the room for two hours, pacing the floor with increasingly evident fury, before storming out. Tonks was sure Remus was more amused than angry, but he'd lectured her for ten minutes on the value of discretion before being startled quiet by Malfoy re-entering the room with a chambermaid who (having been either seduced, paid or imperiused) started taking her kit off. Tonks had just managed to fish one of the Weasley twins' dungbombs out of her pocket and throw it in the suite's window before Remus had side-alonged her out of there, blushing.

(And that night was the first time he'd ever given her a real kiss, somehow hungry and hesitant at the same time, with tongue and everything. It made Tonks's insides seem to float when she remembered it, until she also remembered his lips a few minutes ago forming the word sorry.)

She pushed out a long breath and focused herself.

"I wouldn't call this a bind," she said slowly. "I'd call it more inroads than you made with your little meeting last night, wouldn't you?"

Remus turned to face her. "Which brings me to my second point." His voice was becoming waspish. He wasn't usually combative like this. Usually he wouldn't go more than a couple of rounds before trying to appease her or walking away. "Your need to prove yourself, to be in on everything, be one of the boys, so to speak -"

Tonks gave an indignant laugh. "The boys? Who're the boys, you and -"

Before she could really fuck up and say Sirius, a huge eagle owl she vaguely recognized hit the window with a deafening thud. Remus jumped and wheeled around, actually gasping.

The owl held a crisp ivory envelope. Tonks could see Remus's hand trembling slightly as he read it. He held it out to her when he was done. It was stained with the splattermarks of enormous tears.

Mister Remus J. Lupin,

Dreadfully sorry for the late notice but Minervas got me sending these thingys out and its takin a bit longer then I reckoned. The Headmasters Funerals tomorrow eleven in the morning by the Lake and of course your invited with a Lady friend or what have you. You take care of youreself Remus. Doors always open if your needin a tea and a cry or a Whiskey.

Hagrid

"Oh, bless," Tonks said to herself. Remus was facing the window again, his reflected face inscrutable. The owl clung to the stony ledge outside, waiting. Tonks came up behind Remus and softly, gingerly laid her hand on his back, between his protruding shoulder blades. He was so thin. She could feel the slight raggedness in his breathing and this time she knew it wasn't his rib bothering him.

"You know he must have been so proud of you," she told him.

Remus cleared his throat and slid out from between her and the window. He went to the room's rickety table and chair, spun his wand to conjure paper, quill and ink, and sat himself down, pushing his hair back with both hands and rolling his shoulders, seeming suddenly to possess himself again.

Tonks sidled up behind to watch him write.

Mr. Rubeus Hagrid,

Thank you for the kind invitation. Of course we shall be there and hope to see you. Please be sure to eat, and rest, and get a little sunlight every day.

RJ Lupin

Remus neatly pressed the letter into three folds, running the tips of his long fingers down the seams. How she loved his fingers. He conjured another parchment and dipped his quill:

Poppy,

I'm terribly sorry to bother you, but I wondered if you wouldn't mind arranging a vial of Skele-Gro and a Draught of Peace for me to pick up after the service tomorrow. I can meet you at the Hospital Wing if that's convenient. My best to you and Aja and young Rowan.

Remus

He folded this letter, stacked them both and stood to hand them to Hagrid's owl. He stroked his hand down its feathery back once and sent it off into the sky.

"What's the Draught of Peace for?" asked Tonks.

Remus had his back to her, but he turned his face to the side slightly, his profile in silhouette against the bright window. It set a slow burning alight in her stomach.

"What do you think it's for," he said hoarsely. He sounded tired.

"I think it's because you're losing your shit and you know it and if you'll just breathe for two seconds -"

Remus raised his voice a bit to speak over her: "It's just so I can sleep, Tonks."

"Dreamless Sleep is for sleep. Draught of Peace is for when you're losing your shit and need to breathe for two seconds."

"Fine. Whatever you like."

"Well, look, if you do want to try to salvage this mission, I can brew you a pretty decent anxiolytic right now if I can find some flowers and mushrooms and a river stone."

Remus looked up at the ceiling, his shoulders heaving up and down as he sighed.

"Unless you're still planning to fuck off down the road and never see me again," she added.

Remus seemed to be mulling it over. She wondered whether it was the argument, the funeral, or the potion that had swayed him.

A glow of hope was smouldering at her core and it embarrassed her. She should just walk away and leave him to it, she knew. If he hadn't ever loved her then he wouldn't ever. But it didn't matter. She couldn't go back to waiting to find out he was dead. They were both soldiers and they never left a man behind.

"We can do this together," said Tonks, as gently as she could. "For Dumbledore."

Remus turned and looked at her silently for a long time, a look that was difficult to decipher but both discomfited and elated her at once.

"All right," he sighed at last.

Since Albus passed (actually: that's a poor euphemism. Sickly people in bed pass. Albus got cursed off the top of the castle and died) what students remained at the school had been keeping Poppy Pomfrey busy.

First had come the head boys and girls, each towing younger students in inconsolable tears, telling Poppy they wouldn't stop snivelling and didn't she have something for them? A half dose of Draught of Peace for each, and an hour or two sequestered behind a screen in a crisp white bed to nap or cry it out had done the trick. Later that day, students had started trickling in crazed by hexes and carbuncled by jinxes and cackling with the telltale hysteria of failed Cheering Charms. It was worse than the last day before the holidays.

Over the next two days things had gotten weird. Two girls had tried Obliviating each other for reasons they refused to name, with predictable results. A sixth year Gryffindor, old enough to know better, had tried to recreate Albus's fall from the tower with the ground directly below charmed to bounce like a trampoline - which might have worked if he hadn't missed. Lucky him a passel of second-years had seen him plummeting toward the courtyard and cast their best levitation charms to arrest his fall. It almost worked, and Skele-Gro did the rest.

She was getting low on the Skele-Gro, as it happened, and a shipment wasn't due until the fifth of the month - but if Remus Lupin needed Skele-Gro, he would have it. She picked up the current bottle and shook it: mostly empty. Only one full bottle left, but it should hold them unless something ridiculous happened.

Poppy wondered what the poor boy had gotten himself into this time. It was still another two weeks to the full moon, which she still circled on her office calendar with every new month, a habit she'd been in since 1971. She wondered if he was eating all right and if his old clothes were keeping him warm enough. Remus had always been prone to headcolds and fevers and back when he was a student she was always after him to bundle up.

(And had secretly bought him a new coat in his fifth year, when she realised his threadbare old jacket with the broken zip was the best his parents could do for him. As far as he knew, a graduating student had left it in the ward and never come back).

Remus had spent so much time in her care he was almost like her own. Rowan wasn't born until Remus's sixth year, after years of fertility potions and two miscarriages that almost destroyed Aja. Remus had once caught Poppy crying over it in the linen closet and, after first quickly closing the door to leave her to it, he'd opened it again and wrapped her up in a hug. She was so surprised that she'd stiffened immediately and he'd apologised and stepped back, his face red and his hands held up as if to show he hadn't meant her any harm. He already understood, at that tender age, that people who knew what he was were going to recoil from his touch.

Even Poppy might have, at one time, when Aja was still giving her hell about agreeing to care for a werewolf. But Remus had been polite, sweet, effusively grateful, even solicitous. Always apologising for putting her out and offering to do and fetch things for himself, even with half his arm hanging off him the time he'd caught it somehow in the grand piano at the Shrieking Shack and come to at sunrise in a sea of his blood. The worse he'd hurt himself, the more he'd apologise. It used to break Poppy's heart.

She supposed she'd been soft on him. She'd suspected he and his friends were up to something strange at the full moons in his seventh year but she'd never mentioned it. They'd seemed to do him good, anyway: both his self-esteem and his morning-after condition improved in his last couple of years at the school. She'd been a bit more generous with the potions with him than she'd ever be with another student. Dreamless Sleep and Draught of Peace and Pain Relief Potion whenever he'd sheepishly ask, even a few times when the moon was new, his wounds were mended and his next agony was weeks away. She just couldn't abide seeing the boy suffer any more than he already did.

She tucked the two bottles of potion into a drawer with his folded letter. As long as she had anything to say about it, Remus Lupin would have whatever he needed.

Tonks was beautiful when she was crouching in the mud. They had walked together to the woods and she'd gotten down to it right away, picking two flapping yellow fluttercups and handing them to Remus to tuck into his shirt pocket with pride shining in her face.

Remus remembered when she had first joined the Order of the Phoenix how excited she'd been on their first few missions together: her eyes huge and luminous in the dark of their hiding place. The faint smile that would play over her lips as she broke a curse. Once they'd gotten lucky and managed to foul up a handoff between a Death Eater and some Ministry lackey and she'd gotten so pleased that she'd scrunched up her face and turned her hair a slightly brighter shade of the aquamarine she was wearing in those days. One that nearly glowed in the shadowy alley where they'd hidden.

"These are the ones," she breathed, and knelt on the ground with a squelch to lean down close to a clutch of brown nipplelike mushrooms. She wobbled and had to plant her hands in the muck to catch herself. There was dirt smeared across her face already. She plucked a mushroom from the ground and held it up for Remus to see: it twitched weakly between her fingers. "Fidgetycaps. The recipe calls for one, but now and again I like to put in two. Very relaxing. A bit trippy, actually." She prodded at the little stand of mushrooms so they all started wriggling. "Also, if you've fucked up and gotten a conecap instead, it's a quick death instead of seven days of losing all your organs out your bum."

Remus shifted uncomfortably. A drizzle was starting to filter down through the treetops and dampen his shoulders.

"Only joking," Tonks said seriously. "The conecaps have a webby little annulus around the stems. I can tell the difference." She stuffed a couple of mushrooms in her trouser pocket.

"Are you bringing two? This isn't a good time to get stoned, Tonks."

"Oh, the other one's just for backup. Like Mad-Eye always said -" she squinted one of her eyes and, possibly without realizing it, sprouted a few Moodyesque bushy eyebrow hairs. In a growly Irish brogue: "- If you've got two, you've got one, and if you've got one, you've got Erumpent dung for brains you thick bastard."

Tonks popped up from the ground, both knees caked in black loam, and dusted her hands off on her corduroys.

"Lets go pick out a river stone, eh?"

She tromped off into the shafted gray light of the woods. As Remus followed, he was startled to see a symbol knifed deep into the bark of an oak tree, down near the roots: it was like the rune Jera, meaning year, or sometimes harvest. But it was upside-down.

Back at the inn, they ordered their dinner up to Tonks's room. Tonks decided to take the Minister's suggestion and order a beefburger with pickles and an ice cream with Bailey's and chocolate sauce, just to see if George would do it; to her delighted surprise, he'd at least tried, and now she was happily devouring a bowl of melted strawberry cream with congealed lumps of cold chocolate floating in it. She ate standing over her potion, stirring it occasionally: a habit he knew she'd picked up at the Auror Academy, when having the time to sit and eat a meal was an unthinkable luxury. Her face was bright and warm in the glow of the conjured fire. One-handed, she crumbled a few delicate yellowish fluttercups into the water as it came to a simmer.

Remus sat on her bed and watched, picking at the steak and kidney pie George had brought him. He hadn't watched Tonks brew a potion since her disappointing (and expensive) failure with Wolfsbane last spring. Had it really been over a year? She'd shaken with miserable anger in his arms, more upset than him.

"What goes in the bone potion?" he asked to distract himself. "I'm trying to remember Skele-Gro from Professor Slughorn's class. Chinese chomping cabbage..."

"Did you get bit? I always did."

"Not me, but James nearly lost a finger."

Tonks chuckled. "The field version isn't far off. A red spider, an arm bone..."

"Where on Earth did you find an arm bone?"

Tonks turned and winked at him. "I have my ways," she said slyly. Remus's heart bumped in his chest. There had been a time when a single wink from her could set his guts fluttering for days.

Stop it, you daft schoolboy, he told himself. She is a distraction to you and you are a danger, a burden, and a -

"Ooh, this mushroom smells like Greenhouse 4 after a fertilising," she crowed as she crushed one with the back of her ice cream spoon. "Forgot how strong they were."

She dropped in the crushed mushroom. Bile-green bubbles foamed up to the top of the pan and then subsided. Tonks gave a satisfied chuckle. "I like this part," she said faintly, as if she was speaking to herself. Her wand hand hovered over the pot, vapor curling around her fine wrist. Her skin was damp from it. He could almost taste it.

Beast, spat the voice inside him. Rutting, perverted thing. You'll be sitting by Dumbledore's grave tomorrow reeking of your failure and she'll be reeking of you.

He thought of the afternoon before Dumbledore died when Remus had gone to debrief him on the dismal breakdown of his mission with the werewolf community. Four gone to Greyback, one to Azkaban, seven run off somewhere to start again, one dead. The Montgomery child murdered, so many opportunities lost.

He remembered the pity in Dumbledore's blue eyes as Remus sat in his office, feeling unclean and unbelonging, nauseous from his first real meal in months. Dumbledore had been kind but Remus's failure had echoed through the room with every word he spoke.

"Tonks," he said with a dry throat. She turned around expectantly. "Can you put in the other mushroom," he mumbled.

Tonks blinked at him. "Are you sure?"

"No," he said. "But do it anyway."

And with a restraint that was unlike her and for which Remus was very, very grateful, she nodded and said, "Okay."

Crush - splash - bubble went the other mushroom.

"We'll get a change of clothes at my flat tomorrow," planned Tonks, sprawled on her bed with her knees up. She was starting to feel a pleasant shimmer deep within her. "You left your blue jumper there at Christmas. You can have it back."

Before Remus could deliver one of his tiresome apologies, she quickly added: "And don't say sorry, you fucking knob."

Remus held up his hands appeasingly. "Is this stuff working? Should we drink more?"

She smirked as she remembered Charlie Weasley asking the same thing. He'd had no faith, the muppet, and had drunk the leftovers when she was in the loo. He'd bored her for hours crying about all the dragons who'd had their heartstrings taken for wands and the revenge they'd have someday. She'd had to sneak him back into the Burrow at first light caned out of his mind and trying to touch everything.

"Oh, it'll work," she drawled. "Give it another twenty. It likes to wait until it hears you talking shit."

The white walls of her room were beginning to breathe. They came and went slowly, lazily. Remus's own breath was the same. Tonks's dark hair climbed in vines over the duvet. He was lying next to her - how? He'd just been sitting on the edge of the bed. She was on her back, giggling, and the sound was silver bubbles bobbing in the air.

They'd split the potion at Tonks's insistence, and he was glad of it now because if he'd had any more of it he'd be off his face completely. His face. His fingers went up to touch it like they'd gotten lonely. Nose, cheekbones, the furrows in his forehead: odd that these shapes were the symbol for Remus Lupin in so many people's heads. He conjured the symbol that meant Nymphadora Tonks in his mind: bright and dark eyes, shiny berry lips, smiling. Shocking pink hair in hedgehog spikes. Yes, Tonks. Happy and healthy. The one he loved.

The brown-haired girl beside him, who was both Tonks and not Tonks but also sometimes maybe Dora, had fallen into dreamy quiet. He rolled on his side and faced her.

"Do you think you could morph right now?" he asked, and without his permission his fingers skimmed over her shirt where it covered her stomach. The hateful hissing voice that should have been telling him not to touch her said nothing.

Tonks made a thoughtful little hum. "Into what?"

"Into anything. Show me something."

Tonks seemed to think about it for a moment, then squeezed her eyes shut - a little wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows - and her nose changed into a toucan's stripey beak.

"That's very good," whispered Remus. "It's wonderful that you can still do that. You used to be the life of Number 12 doing that. Little Ginny nearly had an asthma attack when you did the cow that looked like Mundungus."

"Oh, yeah," Tonks sighed. "That was fun."

"Tell me about another time it was fun."

"Hmm." Tonks's fingers were walking in his hair. His hand had decided to rest at the crux of her ribcage so that he could feel it rise and fall as she breathed. He realized that she and the walls were breathing together and it filled him with a joyous wonder. "I remember when we'd be at the shop when I was little and I'd think I'm gonna be the purple of those plums exactly. And the reddish spots on their underneaths, too. And I'd do it with my hair. And then Dad would call me Plum-phadora. Feels warm to think of it. Feels pink, actually."

Her face was luminous with the memory. The pink in her cheeks was the color on the walls of his heart. She kept talking as his fingertips found themselves under the hem of her top, against the hot smooth skin below her navel and the little trail of hairs there. His hand was an adventurer, impetuous. He marvelled at it as he listened.

"I don't know if you can imagine it," she said in a breathy hush. "I used to get to make myself every morning. Anytime I wanted. Create myself. Like a little god. I was the author of my own face."

He found that he could not imagine it, but could imagine her: that frown of pleasure as she'd turn her hair into a wilderness of green curls, her lips opening like a blossom as she gazed upon what she'd wrought, sat on her bathroom counter, one stockinged foot in the sink, fixing herself while he shaved.

She rolled onto her side so that they were facing each other, now, and one of her hands laid itself against his neck, over his pulse, which communicated the swirling peace in his body to her through the skin of her palm. Their faces were close and he could feel her warm breath on his lips and chin, warm breath in plumes, plumes.

"After Sirius fell in, and you ran away, I couldn't stand to look at my old self for a while. Felt mismatched. I went to the mirror and made myself look like I felt, all knackered and dull. When I tried to change back later, I couldn't get it right. I couldn't get back to who I was. I wanted to scream until I burst. I tried my hair so many times: but it was always bubblegum, candyfloss, petunia. Not my colour. The one I made for myself."

Remus's hand had left Tonks's stomach-hairs and come up to touch her head-hairs instead. She pressed her eyes closed and changed it under his fingertips to the pale pink of a camellia blossom. Pink but not her pink but pink and beautiful. He sighed in pleasure against her as he stroked it with his fingertips.

"The more I tried, the worse it got," she whispered. "I gave it up after a while. I had to."

He pulled back to look into her face. Framed in babypink hair she was no longer not-Tonks. She was almost Tonks. She was almost Dora. He wanted to kiss her. He ached with wanting it, a lovely ache, the colour of ripe plums.

"Remus," she said. "I can't not ask again, I need to hear the whole thing." Her eyes were glossy, maybe with tears. It was a rare kind of privilege to see her eyes with tears. "Were you ever in love with me? It's okay. Whatever it is it's okay."

The voice that should tell him not to say it and never to say it was mute and so he found himself saying it, his voice creaking with sorrow:

"I'm... I'm so sorry, Dora." A breath shuddered into him, and the walls and the windows shuddered along. "I am. I - I am in love with you. I tried not to be. I am so sorry."

And her sobs were blue breaking waves over the bed. He found that he loved them too. Tears were on her face like pearls, precious and rare. He touched one with his lips and it tasted of the sea: brine, bluegreen, the birth of the world. And then he found himself under the covers making rapturous love to her, pinning her beneath him as she arched and writhed, kissing her sweet salty mouth and kissing and kissing and kissing it, while their silver bubbles and blue waves crashed all around the little room at the inn.

Note: I made a tumblr for updates/fic talk/general whatevers so if you're interested in saying hi on the internet it's evesaintyves.