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Fingernails adorned with chipped polish tap against porcelain, working out a quiet melody she had heard on the radio that morning. His body shifts about as he talks, rigid and tense, shoulders heavy with the weight of at least two worlds. His profile is half cast in darkness, the tip of his nose, his chin, swallowed into the gloom of the corridor with each slight movement. Shadows of his eyelashes cast onto his cheek, spidery and sweet. Tonks wonders idly how long you have to consider the schematics of a person before it counts as infatuation.
Kingsley chuckles softly at something he says and the corners of her lips curl upward too despite not having heard it. Body responding before brain, she catches herself just a second after, taking a hurried gulp of her tea to cover it up and scalding her tongue in the process. Neither of the men notice.
"Of course. I'll let him know."
These days all they do is let people know – spies and informants and confidants, a network of listening ears and swift messengers. There had been times of action, crouching behind bushes, hip to hip in morning dew as silhouettes converged and pulled apart. But that seems distant now, flighty and fun (although she wouldn't dare breathe that word around the rest of them, all older and more serious than her) and finished. Now they are entrenched in seriousness, their conversations so bleak that it seems almost criminal to not endure them with a constantly furrowed brow. Mornings bring a tightness in her chest that she thinks she should probably talk to somebody about. The newspaper reads like sensationalism and she thinks she's getting better at ignoring it until she isn't; hours pass and her stomach will grumble, unable to sustain her on terror alone. Most days she does not feel scared, which should mean she isn't, but every now and then the extent of what she's gotten herself into hits out of nowhere, and once or twice she's been forced to excuse herself on the pretence of going for a smoke even though she quit months ago.
"Alright?" she asks, as he steps into the kitchen's dull glow. He smiles in response, mouth tight, eyes tired.
It has been this way for some time now: an elaborate, clumsy dance they're moving through. For once, the clumsiness is not all hers, he has mistepped too, but she likes to forget this fact. Then, when his hand finds her hip or his gaze lingers, she can feel a charge of surprise as if it is the first time. Nor does she hold any expectation that it will happen again, saving her from disappointment if it doesn't. He dabbles in tenderness, softening in quiet moments, taken aback by her enough that his defences slip down. That, or he lowers them purposely. She wonders that sometimes – wonders if perhaps he actually wants her desperately and spends every second in her presence stretched taut with need and restraint. It's an intoxicating thought. It's also an immature one, reeking of teenage desperation. A crush, that's what she has. A crush. People are dying and she is stuck here with her head in her hands, wondering if the man she wants also wants her too.
"There's water boiled, if you want tea," she says, nodding her head towards the lightly steaming kettle. He gives a nod of thanks and collects a mug from the cabinet.
It's worse when he's quiet, which is terrible, because he's a quiet man by nature, and because silence always begs her to fill it.
Her mouth opens to say something pointless, ready to let some thought that she hasn't even had yet spill past her lips. It will ease the awkwardness momentarily, and then it will worsen it, and she knows this, but she'll persist regardless. For once, though, he beats her to it. "Your shoulders will get sore if you sit hunched like that," he says, and she blinks with surprise that she hasn't had to coax it out of him. Surprise, also, at the amusement that buoys his words, when such a statement would normally lend itself towards judgement or chastisement. He's entertained by her.
"Is that what you worry about during a war? Backache?" He laughs and she feels proud. "A consequence of old age," he replies.
She rolls her eyes. "You're not old."
Remus raises his eyebrows in protest, but doesn't seem to have the energy to voice it. Or perhaps doesn't care quite as much as she thinks, because he excuses himself then, wishing her a good day and forgetting his drink behind him. He looked as if he might have remembered he had somewhere to be, but that could have just been her imagination. Tonks stares at the condensation forming around the rim and wonders if he even wanted it in the first place.
In the quiet half light of the kitchen she straightens up, lets her shoulder blades kiss the back of the chair and her lower spine curve inwards. The feeling reminds her of becoming somebody else, that strange inhabiting a body that was hers and not hers, all their features and mannerisms transposed onto her flesh. Would he like her more, if she were neater, sat properly, were not so uncouth and needy?
She sinks down again, elbows to table.
He might, but then she would like him less for it.
"You have that look on your face again."
"What look?"
"You're pondering me."
"Perhaps."
"It's off putting."
"My apologies."
The game cracks in half, pieces scattered on the floor, and Tonks yells in delight. Her eye catches Remus's across the room, bright with victory. There's some wry thought to be had there about her disregard for rules but he's too distracted to think it.
"But that's cheating, surely!" Hermione cries, and Ron sighs, somehow managing to sound both exasperated and patient as he guides her through the rules again, explaining that's what you're supposed to do. For a bright witch she struggles with comprehending anything outside of her moral code. But then Remus hates that game too, so he can hardly blame her. Cheating is part of it, but so is luck, and he has never been in fortune's favour. Any game which prioritises chance over skill frustrates him; the latter he at least has some control over. He is a man of tremendous, if mostly secret, effort. A piece rolls close to his shoe. Orphaned from the board it looks small and purposeless and he finds it vaguely disturbing.
Chatter swells in the gap between this game and the next, with some of them rising to fetch new drinks and the twins going, no doubt, to replenish their plates. Sure enough moments later he hears Molly's baffled and fond cries. Even Charlie didn't eat this much! He doesn't expect her voice to reply, telling Molly that her memory must be going wonky – Charlie eats like a fucking horse. He feels a stab of jealousy that she knows this, despite it being perfectly ordinary. They were in the same year at school, good friends. Still, he is dimly envious of everybody in her life who she has a collection of mundane facts for. In an ideal world he would also reside in some normal, boring part of her brain, falling under normal, boring categories. Friend, colleague (of a kind), the bloke she's fucking. In an ideal world she would think of him in these warm but impartial ways. Remus, unfortunately, resists this normalisation at all costs. He wishes he could apologise to her for this in a way she would accept.
She passes him and she squeezes his shoulder gently and then she is back across the room.
Things are different now, changed: if he closes his eyes he can remember what the pad of her thumb tracing along his ridged flesh feels like, can conjure up her hot breath whispering filthy nothings in his ear. There are tender parts too, many, but they both prefer not to dwell on them too long. Or, at least, to pretend as if they don't. He protests to her thinking of him in tender ways and she protests to the idea that she would be so stupid. They hit this conversation back and forth between them until they fall asleep naked, bodies slotted together.
Predictably, it had been alcohol that had finally got them there. Sirius's tolerance has depleted massively with age and prison, a fact he seems oblivious to each and every time a bottle is cracked open. Remus's has only grown sturdier with grief. Tonks is twenty two. The end result is always the same: one of them softly snoring, the other two poised to make regrettable decisions.
Motivated at least partially by self preservation he has settled into a quiet archipelago of excuses, each one more morose and resilient than the last. Too old, too poor, too dangerous: a litany of reasons why he cannot not love her that offer very little to prove that he does not. On the bad days she nods through them, offering smiles that do not reach her eyes and sighs that sound too weary for somebody so young. On the worst days, she asks him to repeat them while she is on top of him, both of them close to coming. Tell me you don't want this, she says. Just, fucking – tell me, as she clutches him tighter and tighter.
"Remus?" Molly's voice startles him, pulling him back into the present. He jerks, nearly drops his book. "I was asking if you wanted any more cake, dear."
Across the room she notices and laughs.
"Are you scared of anything?"
"Of course. Everybody has things they're scared of."
"Yes, but I'm asking specifically."
"That wasn't a specific answer?"
"It sounded like avoiding the question."
"What if the question is the thing I'm scared of?"
"Is it?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"I think you're just being difficult."
"Maybe that too."
It is quiet in Grimmauld Place and they are both dressed in black. A bottle that he wouldn't have been able to get to the bottom of has been dug out and its cork twisted free. This is the best shot at a funeral they can offer him.
"You, can – you look like him," he slurs.
"I can, yes," she responds, confused and wary, hoping it isn't a request.
He shakes his head. "You do, already, you – that look, the one you both get. Like you're about to get into a fight that you're determined to enjoy."
Whiskey sloshes up the side of his glass as he talks, limbs moving in slow motion. Her jaw tightens, her eyes red rimmed. She gets up for a glass of water. The walls of the kitchen feel like they're pressing in on them; there's too much empty space left to fill without Sirius. She needs to move around within it, needs something to do with her hands, needs to swallow something that doesn't burn as it goes down, needs to stop the tightness suddenly twisting about her windpipe.
"M'sorry. Have I upset you?" he asks, his voice now throaty as he tries to lodge sympathy amongst his drunkenness. She shakes her head, standing with her back to him at the sink. Then her shoulders shake too, the whole of her small frame struggling with stillness, and he realises she's crying. "Fuck," he mumbles, rising to his feet. "Fuck, I'm sorry, love. I know. I know," he says, kissing the top of her head, murmuring into her hair. He rests his hand on her back and she thinks the heat of his palm could leave marks, could scorch her skin through her clothes. She's had this thought before, one she's sure he would find sick, that she wouldn't mind if he left a scar on her. It's horrible anyway, but especially grim in the context of his condition, given all that a scar like that would mean. Yet still, she thinks it. Wants proof. Some physical mark to prove they were both there, that he ever touched her like that, that any of this happened. What evidence of Sirius was left but two drunk mourners clutching each other in a house he hated?
"What would you say if I told you I'm in love with you?"
"..."
"I'm sorry."
He will chart a straight line from this moment to the future, to the rest of it, mapping out a divergence in their paths. His stride is quick and his back rigid as he slices through London's thick air, trying not to picture where he is going. If he thinks of the destination too long, he'll talk himself out of it. There is always so much to talk himself out of.
Remus tries not to remember the china she had rescued from her grandmother's house, most half chipped now, collected in little stacks about the kitchen. Tries not to remember the way she smiled into his kisses, her humour a physical thing, the lilt of her laugh vibrating against him, rising from her chest to his mouth. Tries not to remember it as vibrant as it was. Between the colour of her hair to the low light of her bedroom that she had veiled in thin fabric, casting them in fire engine red as she lowered her body down to his. The colour of it all, intense, alight and saturated, was the most startling part. He cannot think of a single moment with her that seemed lacking in it, even amidst the greyness of England's rain, the dampness of war. She is a lit match, persevering.
In recent days he seems to fade into the wallpaper. His excuses have come to fit him nicely – they are lived in now, familiar friends. It has been a long time since he's had many of those.
He arrives at her door without meaning to and wants to blame it on gravity, wants to blame it on the irrevocable pull of fate, wants the universe to provide him with a reason, an excuse, an out. But painfully, embarrassingly, he is forced to admit to himself that all he wants is her, is the soft familiarity of her dishes piled high, her tights laddered, the warmth of the skin that stretches over her ribs and covers that good, gentle heart of hers. The moon is near full, his stomach near empty, and there is some hollowed out cavity in his soul that his fourth glass of wine has convinced him she will fill. It is a thought he regrets instantly as Tonks opens the door to him bleary eyed, in a t-shirt he knows she sleeps in, blinking into the fluorescence of the hallway.
"Remus?" she asks, her voice hoarse and soft, not even awake enough to be alarmed. "Yes," he replies, stupidly, apologetic without even meaning to be. "Hello." He is a clever man, well read, and yet every time he speaks to her he feels like he's fumbling through a new language, each word spoken slightly the wrong way.
She doesn't bother to return his greeting, just says, "You should come in," with a sigh, as if it's something to be regretful about. Probably it will be. Still, they indulge.
Tonks's flat rearranges itself each time he enters it, shifting through colours and shapes as quickly as her body does. It's an assortment of other people's things, which he also suspects is true of her body, but wouldn't ever voice such a personal observation. "You look like shit," she calls from the kitchen, a little callously. "But so do I," she admits a second later, a self deprecating smile on her lips as she rounds the corner, two mugs in hand. He smells cocoa and milky tea, and knows she's heaped sugar into both. Steam rises into mist between them as they take a seat either side of her small table.
They drink in silence for a few seconds, and then start to play a game where they pretend he isn't there for a reason. She asks how the last week or so has been – work has been taking up all her time, which is good for them, because it shows she's still trusted, but bad for them for obvious reasons – and he asks her if she still wants to borrow that book she asked about. Her cheeks flush and she admits she had forgotten about it, and isn't anywhere near finishing the one she's supposed to be reading at the moment. Work stuff. After, she promises. The muscles in his neck feel tight as he nods. This promise could stand for a lot more things than a book; both of them know it, and neither wish to acknowledge. Silence descends again, only momentarily, until she snaps it in half.
"We're doomed, you and me. Aren't we?" she asks, sounding more resigned than he's ever heard her.
The cynicism knocks him back, he feels winded. It's not something he's ever known from her. "Probably," he admits, lacking the energy to be anything other than honest. Besides, whilst she can manage convincing hopelessness, he still struggles with optimism. If this is a tactic, an attempt at reverse psychology, it's not working. "Ah well." It's said like it's a minor inconvenience. Ah well. This is a bad idea. They are going to hurt one another. The war is pressing in. Ah well. Or perhaps it's less of an inconvenience, more just another inevitability that she's come to make peace with. He wonders where she found the time to manage that. There's a lot more on her plate than his, and he isn't anywhere close to reconciled.
It feels like they've finally said something that's been unspoken for a while now, and this moment gives him an opportunity to say what he needs. "I should tell you. I'm leaving. Dumbledore –," he starts, and then corrects himself, not wanting to deflect blame onto the man who has given him more to be thankful for than he has to regret. So he goes with, "I'm needed," instead. It's easier if he frames it as duty. "I'm not sure when I'll be back." He says it firmly, in a tone of voice that reminds her he was a teacher, briefly. The implication that he won't be in contact, that they won't see each other, that he might not be back if things go awfully wrong, is made plain.
Colour drains from her and it makes him want to flinch away, but forces himself to look at what he's done. She mouths what as she processes. Her brows scrunch together and then arch. A long time passes, or perhaps it's a short one. Remus is frozen in it regardless. "There's nothing I can say to stop you, is there?" He shakes his head sadly. "Would you tell me if there was?"
The look in her eyes is barely short of pleading and he feels acutely sick.
"Dora –," he starts, but she hushes him with a sharp, "Don't." Then chucks in a, "Wanker," a second later, as a tear slides down to her chin. Remus wants to catch it, but doesn't dare touch her without permission.
Tonks excuses herself to the bathroom and he imagines her bracing herself on the sink, crying, or maybe silently cursing him out. The latter would be preferable. A cold, cowardly instinct tries to convince him to pack himself up and leave now, that it would be the kind thing to allow her to hate him, but his morals tie him to the chair. At least, he calls it morality. There's every chance it's just another brand of selfishness.
When she re-enters she looks smaller, like she's forgotten half of herself in the other room. "Can we – ? One more time. And I'm not holding you to anything, I don't need –," her fumbling frustrates her but she persists, finishing with, "It's just sex." It's plainly a lie but they both know it, which makes it acceptable. One of them lying to the other is a betrayal, both of them lying in unison is just how they work.
"This isn't a trap," she reassures, but he's already rising from his seat, caught in something regardless. I know, comes out from his mouth and then from hers, agreeing on things different but also the same.
Their clothes are discarded slower than expected, finding company amongst her carefully arranged mess. There is a very real possibility that she is choosing to savour this, filing each touch immediately away as the last, and he is glad he can't read her mind to see if that's true. It's horribly defeatist, if it is. He doesn't want to think of defeat while he's inside her. After, all of that can come after. Her sighs slip out like a promise. Orange from the streetlights outside pours down her shoulder and she breathes into his mouth and he gives her exactly what she has asked for and then he is certain that this is selfishness.
Later, when he has buttoned up his shirt and she has taken the mugs from earlier to the sink, the time comes to part.
They hover at the door frame, both expectant for something they know won't come. "Alright then," he says. It's a poor goodbye, but he thinks she would kill him if he said the word. Sure enough, the corner of her mouth quirks up, pleased he has chosen otherwise. Pleased he has not doomed them entirely.
"Alright," soft, throaty. The cadence of her voice, the brush of her lips on his cheek: he commits her to memory as she is happening.
The door shuts with a click and he counts his footsteps as he walks away.