Also three new Remus/Tonks drabbles.
1. Open and Shut
“What’s that?”
Remus snaps the notebook shut, his sketches safely hidden from prying pixie’s eyes, and tucks it under his arm with as much nonchalance as he can muster.
“I would say it’s something that’s of no interest to you, Dora,” he drawls, trying very hard to hide the tinge of laughter with sarcasm, “but experience has taught me that it would only pique your curiosity and make you redouble your efforts to peek at it.”
“You’re bloody well right it would!” Tonks laughs, and gives a halfhearted swipe at his arm that Remus, quite thankfully, saw coming from a mile away, and keeps the book tucked safe and sound right where it is. “Come on, lemme see!”
“Darling, usually when someone closes a notebook and puts it away upon the approach of company, it means they are rather disinclined to share with the class.”
“Fine, then,” she says, draping herself over the back of his chair and settling her arms around his shoulders, “though seeing as I so generously gifted you with that handsome journal, it’s only fair that I’m entitled to a look-see.”
“All’s fair in love and war, Miss Tonks,” he raises his eyebrows and lets them lend his smile the satisfied bit of triumph he knows will make her bristle, “making unfairness equally as fair as fairness. So, nice try, but no.”
Tonks looks at him through her eyelashes and grins a downright cheshire grin, sliding her hands from his shoulders all the way down his chest. He can feel her nails scrape through the fabric of his jumper. “Not even if I use my feminine wiles, Professor?”
Soft laughter rumbles from deep in his chest. “Not likely, dear,” Remus smirks, bringing one of her hands back up to lay a kiss against her wrist, “though I’d encourage you to do your absolute worst.”
2. Steam
One minute Remus is just sitting on her couch, reading the Prophet, patiently minding his own business, and then next his face is buffeted by a cloud of steam so dense it’s even fogged up the living room window.
“Wot’re you still doing here?” she asks, batting steam away from her face. Her expression is fixed in mock surprise that’s quite a bit weaker than the grin threatening to overtake it. “All the complaining you do about my showers, I thought for sure you’d have buggered off by now.”
All she’s wearing are blue plaid pyjama shorts cinched by a satin ribbon at the waist, underneath a worn dress shirt of his-unbuttoned halfway to her navel-that he’d left here Merlin knows how long ago. The humidity she’d unleashed from the bathroom has wilted his newspaper, but all things considered, he’s actually rather glad he’s still sitting on her couch.
“The very word ‘shower’ implies a short wash, Nymphadora. I won’t ask what else you could possibly be doing in there-” She giggles like a primary-schooler and he rolls his eyes, “Stop being cheeky, you know what I mean-but an hour? Do you really need a whole-”
She plops onto the couch next to him and swings her bare legs across his lap. “Cheeky, am I?”
He slides his hand down the still-damp skin at the small of her back until his fingers slip beneath the band of her pyjamas.
“Maybe just a little.”
03. Wandering Thoughts
She’s lying on his chest tracing patterns on his skin, smiling drowsily up into his face, and he’s got one hand buried in the pink tangle of her hair and to be honest Remus is quite at a loss as to how he’s managed to come by such extreme good fortune. She’s an absolute mess, hair everywhere, face flushed, and she’s absolutely stunning in a ridiculous sort of way. And the way she’s looking at him, through those sleepy dark eyes that sparkle and stare as if he doesn’t have one single flaw in his entire body-he’d say he doesn’t deserve it, but she’d likely wake up enough to maim him rather a lot for it, and so he holds his tongue.
Sunlight dapples through her questionably-patterned curtains and spills across her back in a way that makes him want to lick the shadows from her spine. The room is warm, her cheek sticking to him a bit when she lifts her head; she rubs the spot on her face and bites her lip. He grins and Nymphadora bends her head forward, kisses the dip beneath his throat and he resists the urge to turn her over and kiss her senseless.
But, alas, they have places to be in under an hour, and if Remus is going to do less-than-virtuous things to the pixie drumming her fingers on his collarbone, it will be when he’s got ample time to devote to it. He doubts the Order will take kindly to his mind wandering where he can love her hot and sweet and slow, but it’d take a fairly skilled Legilimens to wrench it out of him, and he’s not keen on sharing.