Clearing the Air by Jess Pallas
Title: Clearing the Air
Author: jesspallas
Rating & Warnings: PG 13 for a certain degree of inevitability…;p
Prompts: A Day of Cringing, Talking Mirror, Romantic Comedy, Location Prompt 1.
Word Count: 5219
Summary: But at the same time, Remus had found himself dwelling upon the fact that he wouldn’t have been in this sorry mess, he wouldn’t have had to be plotting the gruesome death of his ex-best friend, if Nymphadora ruddy Tonks hadn’t shouted at him so adorably on a forest path and put ideas in his head that made him susceptible to Siriusness in the first place.
Author’s Notes: This fic is the follow up to my first round fic A Fine Folly, a fact that became kind of inevitable for me when I got the prompt Day of Cringing and couldn’t help but imagine the likelihood of cringing embarrassment on both sides if Remus and Tonks ever actually attempted to reasonably talk through what had happened. As with A Fine Folly, I sat down and started it with little more that the first line and an idea of how to use the mirror in my head and literally wrote whatever came! I hadn’t much intention of involving Sirius in the issue but he sort of shouldered his way in and in the end I let him have his fun. My first version was more serious and so I went back and added some more daftness, which I very much hope works okay and doesn’t jar. I hope you enjoy it. :)
Clearing the Air by Jess Pallas
There was no doubt in Remus Lupin’s mind, no room for deliberation or debate. It was beyond question, beyond consideration and beyond all reason.
This was entirely the fault of Nymphadora Tonks.
He made one last attempt to break the complex web of spells that had, moments before, sealed shut the door to the Grimmauld Place library and closed them both inside, but say what you would (and he mostly did) about Sirius, his spellwork was as faultless as ever. The door refused to budge.
A few yards away, lingering by the fireplace, the aforementioned Nymphadora Tonks was watching his efforts with an expression that rather neatly encapsulated the potent combination of guilt, alarm and nervous anticipation that Remus himself was fighting to batten down. As he released the doorknob with a final, irritable clatter, she flinched slightly.
“I’m really sorry, Remus,” she ventured uncertainly. “I honestly didn’t know that he was going to do that. And if I’d known you were listening…”
Remus closed his eyes. Under normal circumstances, he would have offered some platitude, reassured her that he didn’t blame her in the slightest and suggested that they sit down and chat until her wayward cousin stopped being an arse and taking his boredom out on other people.
But he couldn’t, not just then, not facing the highly perilous, friendship-trashing thoughts and feelings that were whirling around in his mind, that had been ever since she had irrationally hurled accusations and one astounding admission at him on a forest path moments after he had rescued her from four Death Eaters and a large clump of Devil’s Snare in a lonely folly in Shropshire. And now, with what he had just heard her say…
This whole business was her fault. Entirely.
She had to put the idea there, didn’t she? She had to put the thought into his head. And then to discuss the whole sorry mess with an inanimate Charmed object within Extendable Earshot of Sirius bloody Black and himself…
He became aware that her eyes were upon him once more, a little quizzical and apparently slightly confused that the usual platitudes had been less than forthcoming. He sighed.
Be nice, Lupin. That’s what you do, isn’t it…
“Do you always argue with your talking mirror like that?” he asked, rather wearily.
He felt a flash of guilt as Tonks cringed visibly. “Ummm… sometimes,” she admitted, her cheeks flushed and her eyes darting in every direction but his. “It helps, you know, to sort my head out sometimes.” Her eyes darkened slightly. “Though there are times that I’d happily take the seven years bad luck just to shut the ruddy thing up. Trust Sirius to give me the room with a mirror with darling Aunt Walburga’s attitude.”
He shouldn’t be so annoyed. Remus knew that. She hadn’t really done anything wrong, per sae, aside from putting highly inappropriate ideas into the head of a dirty old man and then discussing the prospect of said ideas coming to fruition at high volume with a piece of reflective glass. He couldn’t really blame her for that.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to.
“And you couldn’t have discussed it with a human being?” The words were almost plaintive. “Quietly? Elsewhere?”
Tonks’ flush deepened. “Tell someone else? Sweet Merlin, Remus, I haven’t even been able to talk about it with you!”
“Which, I think, is what we’re doing here.” Sighing again, Remus moved towards her, dropping into one of the two chairs by the fire as he wiped one weary hand over his face and took a moment to pray for the swift release of death. “Because even with Christmas coming, Sirius has nothing better to do than interfere in other people’s…”
Not love lives. He was not going to say love lives.
Because he didn’t have a love life. Indeed, the odds of him having much of a love life at any point in the future were roughly analogous with the chances of Kreacher greeting him on the doorstep of a sparkling Grimmauld Place one morning with a broad smile and a steaming, tasty steak and kidney pie. In spite of the hearty speculations his mind had recently taken to indulging in, it wasn’t going to happen.
Don’t say loves lives. Just don’t. That’s a hell of a can of worms to open while locked in a library with an attractive young woman who…
No. Stop that.
But no alternative term was forthcoming and he could feel the unspoken words hanging heavily like a smoggy shroud as he heard Tonks deposit herself in the chair at his side and let out a long, drawn out breath.
“Sirius is an interfering git,” he heard her proclaim.
Glancing up from the safe concealment of his hand, Remus risked a tentative smile. “Now that at least we can agree on.”
Perhaps a revised consideration of the circumstances was in order. It was Tonks’ fault. But it was also very, very much Sirius Black’s fault too.
It would have blown over. He was sure of it. After all, it had only been a dream and dreams were irrational, inconsequential things. What did it matter that she had admitted to a dream in which they had kissed? Logically, he was sure that it couldn’t really mean anything that she had taken so much trouble to interpret possible meanings of the dream and of course, how else was he supposed to read her irrational anger with him over it but as embarrassment, discomfort, possibly even revulsion at the prospect? They were friends after all and there was no reason that their friendship should be in any way altered by what were, as Sirius would have it, no more than random firings of her sleeping brain.
And the fact that the subject had been broached in such a memorable manner was, of course, entirely the reason that the random firings of his brain had returned the favour the following night and envisioned him sweeping her into his arms on the very forest path where they had spoken and kissing the poor girl senseless.
Dream Tonks had rather seemed to like it. Dream Remus had definitely been in favour. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the coming of morning, Dream Remus would certainly have been all for the idea of taking the matter somewhat further…
Real Remus had been somewhat more prosaic. There was no point in imagining things that weren’t going to be, whether or not the idea, now planted, held a distinct and definite appeal. It wasn’t going to happen.
But the next time he saw her, he found himself wondering - had the same thoughts crossed her mind the morning after? Was it possible that she could also find a certain appeal in that idea? Or was the entire business so utterly revolting to her that she was quietly hoping and praying that the prospect would never rear its head again?
A part of him - the masochistic part, he suspected - wanted answers to those questions, was willing to weigh the risk of humiliation, lost friendship and exposure as a dirty old werewolf lusting after a lovely, intelligent, funny young Auror against the possible gains said young Auror had to offer. The rest of him, though rounding on his mind for being a bit of a pervert, was rather more content to enjoy the idea in the silence of his thoughts and never allow grim reality to burst the bubble.
After all, it was a fantasy. In spite of her dream, she’d never seriously consider him romantically.
Would she?
So he had believed until the events of around ten minutes previously had shot his comfy mindset of happy denial straight out of the water.
Bloody Sirius. Bloody Sirius and his unerring nose for stirrable situations. James had suffered many an indignity in regards to his feelings for Lily over the years and Peter’s every crush was generally crushed within a couple of days by Padfoot’s intervention. More prone to keeping his head down, Remus had generally been the one to escape such censure until now, but when Sirius had, with painful inevitability, spotted that his old friend had been out of sorts and then, with aggravating tenacity, noted a similar trend in his young cousin, he had confronted Remus on the subject. And in a fit of utter madness for which he would probably never be able to forgive himself, Remus had confessed about everything.
He had fervently sworn Sirius to secrecy and insisted, on pain of death, that he was never to breathe a word of what he’d just admitted anywhere in the direction of Tonks. As though that was going to make a difference.
He should have realised then that he’d made a terrible mistake. To judge by past experience, he really should have known better. For unbeknownst to him, Sirius had made Plans; full on, carefully plotted, capital letter earning Plans. And those Plans had erupted all over Remus when he’d made the cardinal mistake of sitting and reading in quiet innocence in the library and allowed a maniacally grinning Padfoot to enter trailing two pieces of fleshy coloured string.
“Put this to your ear and listen up,” he’d told his old friend with a hint of a smirk. “I’ve found a way to get to the bottom of your Tonks issues.”
Remus had dropped the book and glared irritably. “How many times, Sirius? There are no Tonks issues! The poor girl is probably embarrassed enough without you…”
“Oh shut up, Moony.” Sirius’ command had been genial and friendly. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble for you. I overheard Tonks arguing with the talking mirror in her bedroom about a week ago - it used to be Mum’s, so it has a bad habit of spouting her special brand of tripe every so often and you know how Tonks would take to that. But anyway, it gave me an idea.” He had dropped in the chair at Remus’ side and shoved the Extendable Ear roughly into his hands. “I snuck into her room yesterday and Charmed said mirror so it’ll bring your name up the next to she looks in it. And then I planted the other end of these blighters in the hall outside her room. So once you’re mentioned, as you inevitably will be, you can find out once and for all whether you’ve got any chance of getting your furry little…”
“Enough.” It had seemed prudent to Remus to halt the flow of his friend’s words before they navigated all the way across the Oceans of Innuendo to make landfall on the coast of Crude. “Good God Sirius, that’s your cousin. And you’re spying on her…”
“Nope.” Sirius had grinned as he shoved his length of string into one ear - a flick of his wand had torn its reluctantly grasped companion away from Remus’ fingers and poked it uncomfortably into Remus’ left ear. “We’re spying on her.”
Remus had glared yet again. But even as he had reached up irritably to yank the offending eavesdropping device away, he had heard words that had frozen his hands in their tracks.
“What do you mean, I shouldn’t consort with half-breeds? I’ll consort with whatever half-breeds I bloody well choose! ”
He had seen the smirk spreading across Sirius’ face. He had heard his own brain demanding that he remove the listening device immediately, flee from the temptations brought before him by an evil-minded and highly bored animagus and go back to the safety of the land of denial where he belonged. But his fingers had inexplicably refused to obey.
“I dreamed about him! I dreamed about snogging him and you know what? It was good! I liked it! I enjoyed it! I might even fancy trying out the real thing sometime, you snooty, stuck up waste of glass! Maybe he is older than me and a werewolf and my friend, but he’s not bad looking and he’s funny and kind and…and yeah! Yeah, if he was interested, I reckon I’d go for it! Hell, I’d snatch his hands off and kiss him until his lips fell off, so there! You can shut up, you bloody thing! I think Remus Lupin’s fantastic and you can go to whatever hell is for Charmed prejudiced bloody mirrors! Okay?”
Okay…
He wasn’t entirely sure how long he had spent staring blankly into the fire in stunned and vaguely reverent silence after he had finally managed to pull the revelatory piece of string from his ear. He wasn’t sure either how long he had spent lost in a mind half torn between Dream Remus’ celebratory I-told-you-so jigs of triumph and Real Remus’ quiet, daunted horror at the idea that he might actually now have to step up and do something about it.
Because things like this didn’t happen to him. They just didn’t. Attractive women who knew of his condition did not bawl their interest in him at inanimate objects. They did not dream about kissing him and tell him so. They did not peak his interest and lead him to suspect he might be falling for them when there was a chance in hell of it actually going somewhere.
It wasn’t normal. It just wasn’t.
Just as she wasn’t normal. She had crashed through his protective walls and barricades, built up by years of squandered hope, first with friendship and now with… what? Why did she have to complicate what had been a perfectly good friendship with such things? Why did she have to be so much like everything he’d never known he’d wanted?
It was around that point that Remus Lupin had decided that the entire business was completely the fault of Nymphadora Tonks.
But it had been then and only then that he had come to another realisation.
It was quiet. Unnaturally so.
Where were the jokes? The innuendos? The remarks on his condition made in the worst possible taste?
He had looked up. Sirius was gone.
A heavy feeling of utter doom had weighed deeply within Remus’ chest. Oh no…
And a moment later, the doom had been justified. He had heard footsteps in the hall outside and then two voices he had certainly not wished to hear in tandem emerged discussing things he had definitely not wanted to hear them say.
“What can I say? I heard you yelling my best mate’s name at a talking mirror and I couldn’t help but be curious. Why don’t you nip into the library and wait while I get some tea from the kitchen? Then we can have a proper chat…”
Oh no, oh Sirius, don’t you bloody dare…
But it had been too late. Even as Remus had risen from his chair, insanely desperate to forestall what he knew was coming, Tonks had crossed the threshold, her eyes widening at the sight of him, just as Sirius, grinning like a fiend, had reached out and slammed the door shut. The flash of spellwork had rapidly followed.
They had shouted at him, of course. Remus hadn’t actually realised until that moment just how much of his former dorm-mates’ more inventive language he had absorbed over those seven years at Hogwarts. But Sirius had been unrepentant as ever, declaring that they clearly needed to chat about some things and that if they were good boys and girls, he’d let them out by dinnertime. And then, for good measure, he had told Tonks that Remus had also overheard ever word she’d said. And then he’d buggered off.
Remus had resolved in that moment that by whatever means he had at his disposal, he was going to get through that door and reduce Sirius Black to nothing more than a smouldering stain on the floor. There would be pain, dismemberment and possibly something involving a plate of stale dog biscuits, a couple of rabid doxies and a small aubergine. But at the same time, he had found himself dwelling upon the fact that he wouldn’t have been in this sorry mess, he wouldn’t have had to be plotting the gruesome death of his ex-best friend, if Nymphadora ruddy Tonks hadn’t shouted at him so adorably on a forest path and put ideas in his head that made him susceptible to Siriusness in the first place.
Her fault. Entirely.
And even as his irrational and uncharitable thoughts about how to blame she was for this mess surged upwards, a red-faced and cringingly embarrassed Tonks had retreated to the fireplace to die of apparent embarrassment in peace.
And now here they were, sat side by side in their respective chairs in front of the library fire facing a conversation that both parties had been avoiding with a fervour bordering on obsession for more than two weeks already.
The silence that followed was epic. It echoed. It resounded. It deafened and roared and rang and all the other awkward things that long and epic silences did when they were supposed to just keep silent. Remus considered speaking, clearing his throat, coughing, even feigning a sneeze in order to break it, but the consequences of such an act would be conversation and that was too horrific to contemplate.
Ruddy coward, Dream Remus whispered. Good boy, said the rest of him. Perhaps if they sat in silence for long enough, Sirius would come and let them out without a single word having to be exchanged…
But in the end, Tonks’ bravery levels outweighed the trickling away of her patience. Her voice stepped into the profoundness of the silence and banished it away.
“You really heard all those things I said?” she managed, her voice rich with doom-laden uncertainly. “About…”
She waved an absent hand, her cheeks red. There was no real need to finish the sentence. Both present knew to what she was referring.
Was this better than the silence? As Remus nodded with resignation, he wasn’t sure. “Every word. But I wouldn’t have even been listening if Sirius hadn’t…”
Tonks didn’t seem particularly interested in any further abuse of her cousin, apparently more preoccupied with the other, looming issue that hulked over them both. “We’re going to have to talk about this, aren’t we?” she remarked wearily, twisting the hem of her sleeve over and over between her fingers.
Remus sighed deeply. “I think we are.”
“This is going to be excruciating, isn’t it?”
Well that was certainly to the point. “I strongly suspect so.”
“Bloody Sirius.” Tonks stared viciously into the fire for a moment. “Well, I guess I’d better start since… well… what I said after what happened at Hawkestone Folly…”
“Yes.” With a distinct lack of Gryffindor courage, Remus was more than happy to let the Auror steer through the murky waters of this conversation. “Quite.”
Tonks swallowed hard. “I dreamed about you. About kissing you.” It sounded as though every word was being forced out of her throat. “And that’s why I was asking about dreams and stuff because I was worried about what it might mean… I mean, for our friendship…”
“Of course.” Friendship. That was what mattered here. Their friendship.
“And then I got all worked up and mad while I was stuck and somehow I decided it was your fault I got into that mess…”
“I remember.” He did. Vividly. The look of furious, irrational, adorable irritation on her face had featured quite prominently in the early stages of his own…
Stop it!
“And then I was yelling at you and it was stupid and I never meant to blame you out loud or mention some stupid dream that probably meant nothing at all…”
“Random firings of the brain.” The words were as much for his own benefit as hers.
“Yeah, exactly. But then…” The twisting of her sleeve intensified. “I found myself wondering… but we’re friends and it’d be so weird… “
Weird was not an encouraging word. But Remus knew he didn’t want encouraging words, he wanted to preserve their friendship, maintain things the way they were supposed to be…
Didn’t he?
Yes. Yes, yes, yes…
Make a joke. Make light of it. Relieve some of this blasted awkward tension, give her a dignified way out…
He forced a smile that felt as false as it probably looked. “You, know, given the competition around here, with Bill and Kingsley and the like… Well, I’m quite flattered to have featured. It’s a compliment really. And your defence of me in the face of the vicious attack by your mirror was most gratifying, though obviously you got a little carried away…”
Was it just in the deluded part of his mind that belonged to Dream Remus that he saw a flicker of disappointment cross her face?
“Yeah,” she muttered absently. “Yeah, carried away. That mirror was bloody annoying.”
“It belonged to Sirius’ mother. He thinks it might have inherited some of her views. Charmed mirrors can do that sometimes.”
“Hmmm.” Tonks was avoiding his eyes once more. “Well, I’m sorry… you know, if I embarrassed you or anything…”
“Sirius will have a field day.” Remus allowed himself a genuinely rueful smile, which she returned. “But like I said - to me, it’s a compliment.”
Tonks smiled wanly. “So… I guess… we’re sorted?”
It didn’t feel sorted. Nothing felt sorted. At that particular moment, Remus had to admit to himself that things felt about as sorted as one of Mundungus Fletcher’s store rooms, even worse in fact than they had been in the unspoken world of the last two weeks as they had both pretended that nothing whatsoever had happened. But they ought to feel sorted, he needed to make them feel sorted, because this was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? To find a safe and reasoned way in which to withdraw from something that obviously couldn’t spread out of daydreams and over-eager mirror arguments into reality? And that was what he’d got.
So why did he feel like crawling into a corner? Why did he feel as though he was going to have to cringe and hide every time he crossed her path in the future?
I didn’t want that. I can’t let it be like that! Friendly, be friendly and it’ll all be forgotten in the end…
He made himself smile again. “Of course.”
“Good.” She was smiling along with him now. Never mind that he had never seen a more forced looking smile in his life - she was smiling and so it was fine.
After all, what else could they do?
It was after about ten seconds of the most excruciating exchange of smiles that Remus could ever recall that Tonks abruptly snapped.
“Oh bollocks, Remus!” she exclaimed abruptly. “It’s not sorted! Nothing’s bloody sorted and we both know it! Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Fake smiles and awkward tension? If we leave it like this, our friendship will be shot!”
She was right. Of course she was right. “I know.” Remus sighed as he forced himself to be candid. “But what else can we do? I mean we can’t…”
“Yeah.”
“It’d be…”
“Weird. Yeah.”
“And if it didn’t work out between us…”
“The friendship’s shot whatever.” Tonks echoed his sigh. “So we can’t go forwards but we can’t go back. And we ruddy well can’t stay like this.” She glanced up at him, dark eyes meeting his with both trepidation and the same strange anticipation he’d noticed earlier.
“So how about this?” Her voice almost seemed to tremble slightly. “How about we just… kiss?”
For a moment, Remus was certain he’d misheard. In fact, he briefly suspected that Dream Remus had ruthlessly commandeered his ears for nefarious purposes of his own. “Pardon?”
Tonks took a gulping breath. “We just…kiss,” she repeated, waving one hand in loose, absent circles in the air. “I mean, that’s the problem, isn’t it? The whole kiss-dream thing. It put the idea there when we both know it’s daft but it’s not going to go away until we…well, do something about it. So we just kiss. One kiss, to clear the air, get this stupid business out of both of our systems. And then after that, we can laugh it off and get back to normal.”
Remus hesitated. He had to admit that, even once Dream Remus had been clubbed repeatedly into silence, the idea had merits. It would be a resolution. The end of it all. The air would be clean and clear between them.
It would be a kiss.
One kiss.
He could do that.
“Well.” He swallowed hard. “That seems like a…reasonable suggestion.”
Tonks nodded almost frantically. “Yeah. It’s good. So…” The random hand was waving once more, in some frantic, incomprehensible series of gestures. “How do you reckon… I mean we could stand up or…I mean, we could sit on the rug down there…”
Remus wasn’t sure that standing was going to be a very good idea for reasons too embarrassing to air out loud. “The rug would probably be more…practical.”
“Good. Okay.” Breathing hard, Tonks lifted herself out of her chair and deposited herself on the rug beside the fire. After a moment to compose himself and to club Dream Remus one final time for good measure, Remus eased himself down to join her.
Her face, caught in the light of the flickering fire, was pale and strangely nervous.
“So,” she said almost jovially. “Should… should we hold each other or…?”
“Maybe if I put my hand…” Remus lowered his fingers carefully, almost delicately onto her left shoulder and tried to ignore the disconcerting sense of the heat of her warm skin beneath the jumper she was wearing. “And the other…” He caught hold of her right elbow. “For balance,” he clarified with a jerk of his fingers.
“And I’ll…” He felt her hands come to rest gently, tentatively, against his waist, little more than a fingertip touch but it was enough to make Remus wish his robes were a great deal less threadbare. “There. Okay?”
Remus could only pray that she could not feel the frantic pounding of his heartbeat that was sounding alarmingly like Dream Remus playing a drum-roll in his ears. “I think so.”
Tonks gave a desperate little laugh. “So I guess we’re ready… I mean, I’m ready, if you’re…”
“I’m ready.”
“Good.”
“Great.”
“So… shall we…?”
“Do you want me to…?”
“Yeah. Yeah, if you want to…”
“As long as you want me to.”
“Yep, that’d be best.”
“And you’re still sure you want to do this?”
“Clear the air, Remus.”
“Right. Clear the air.”
“On three?”
“And I’ll… start it?”
“Yeah, so… On three. One, two…”
Three.
Remus fought to restrain himself as his lips brushed against hers, as he felt their warmth, their gentle caress, the magical feel of something he had only ever thought he’d dream of. But he couldn’t, he wouldn’t indulge himself or his selfish desires - this kiss was to restore friendship, to clear the air, to get these stupid ideas out of his system once and for all and however much he yearned to part her lips, to deepen the kiss, to slip into desperate passion and lose himself as completely as his dream self had, he simply could not allow it.
For a few moments longer, they tentatively explored each other lips, gently, carefully, almost deliberately, their fingers flexing awkwardly against each other’s bodies as though unsure exactly what the parameters for an air-clearing kiss really were. But then, slowly, he eased his lips away from hers and pulled himself away.
There. You see? You did it. Nice and safe. And now everything will be back to normal…
He opened his eyes.
And nothing was normal at all.
Tonks’ dark-eyed gaze was fixed upon him, her heart-shaped face flushed as she breathed heavily, her chest rising and falling sharply with the motion as she forced herself to smile.
“There,” she said with cheer as false as before. “Isn’t that better?”
No. No, it wasn’t bloody well better. It wasn’t enough…
But it had to be. It just had to be.
That was all he was allowed to have.
One kiss. And it was over.
“Yes,” he managed with faux relief. “Much.”
“All done.”
He ought to let go of her now. And she really ought to be letting go of him…
“Out of our systems.”
Her eyes seemed burn against him, her pink, slightly puffy lips tempting to come back again, come back for more…
“We’ve cleared the air.”
Gods, her face was still so close and so flushed, and he’d done that, he’d done that to her…
“The air is clear.”
He barely managed to speak the words and they were desperate, desperate lies. How could he ever have believed that this would be a good idea, that one single kiss would ever be enough?
She was hovering now, her mouth a mere inch from his, her breath ticking his lips almost agonisingly. “We can be friends again.”
“Just…” Her lips brushed his, just slightly, just gently, almost faltering his words. “Just… friends…”
And then the inevitable happened. Fervently.
There was nothing tentative about their second kiss, nothing restrained or careful as their lips crashed down upon each other, his hands caressing her arms, her shoulders, her back as he felt her fingers grasp his waist, pulling him closer and he made no effort to resist as her lips parted and oh glory…
Coherent thought was no longer an option. Lost in the world that was Tonks, Remus was vaguely aware that he was being nudged and lowered downwards, that his back was now flat against the rug and her body was resting, was pressing dow over his as her hands ventured magnificently into exploration of what lay below…
And then, swallowed by passion, by glorious lips and magnificent hands, Remus Lupin knew nothing but her.
And Dream Remus, having put down his drums, stepped up and moved into reality.
* * *
After a moment or two’s contemplation, Sirius Black decided that he could probably take the repeated squelching of lips and one heavy thud of two collapsing bodies as a sign that his work in that library was done. Grinning to himself, he plonked his feet up on the kitchen table as he pulled the fleshy piece of string from his ear and took a hefty swig of firewhiskey.
I knew it.
Sweet Merlin, those two could be thick. He’d been all but able to taste the tension between them even before Moony had owned up to Tonks’ confession and his own night time taster sessions of the whole hog he was now apparently experiencing upstairs. And as for clearing the air…
He allowed himself a smirk. Unless he was very much mistaken, by the time he went up to release Moony and his cousin, the air would be so clear it would sparkle. And if they decided to be prats about it…
Well. There were plenty more lockable rooms in the house. And if they forced him into action, well he could hardly be held to blame for trying to help, now could he?
There was simply no doubt about it, no deliberation or debate. If they forced him into action again, it would be entirely the fault of Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks...
Author: jesspallas
Rating & Warnings: PG 13 for a certain degree of inevitability…;p
Prompts: A Day of Cringing, Talking Mirror, Romantic Comedy, Location Prompt 1.
Word Count: 5219
Summary: But at the same time, Remus had found himself dwelling upon the fact that he wouldn’t have been in this sorry mess, he wouldn’t have had to be plotting the gruesome death of his ex-best friend, if Nymphadora ruddy Tonks hadn’t shouted at him so adorably on a forest path and put ideas in his head that made him susceptible to Siriusness in the first place.
Author’s Notes: This fic is the follow up to my first round fic A Fine Folly, a fact that became kind of inevitable for me when I got the prompt Day of Cringing and couldn’t help but imagine the likelihood of cringing embarrassment on both sides if Remus and Tonks ever actually attempted to reasonably talk through what had happened. As with A Fine Folly, I sat down and started it with little more that the first line and an idea of how to use the mirror in my head and literally wrote whatever came! I hadn’t much intention of involving Sirius in the issue but he sort of shouldered his way in and in the end I let him have his fun. My first version was more serious and so I went back and added some more daftness, which I very much hope works okay and doesn’t jar. I hope you enjoy it. :)
Clearing the Air by Jess Pallas
There was no doubt in Remus Lupin’s mind, no room for deliberation or debate. It was beyond question, beyond consideration and beyond all reason.
This was entirely the fault of Nymphadora Tonks.
He made one last attempt to break the complex web of spells that had, moments before, sealed shut the door to the Grimmauld Place library and closed them both inside, but say what you would (and he mostly did) about Sirius, his spellwork was as faultless as ever. The door refused to budge.
A few yards away, lingering by the fireplace, the aforementioned Nymphadora Tonks was watching his efforts with an expression that rather neatly encapsulated the potent combination of guilt, alarm and nervous anticipation that Remus himself was fighting to batten down. As he released the doorknob with a final, irritable clatter, she flinched slightly.
“I’m really sorry, Remus,” she ventured uncertainly. “I honestly didn’t know that he was going to do that. And if I’d known you were listening…”
Remus closed his eyes. Under normal circumstances, he would have offered some platitude, reassured her that he didn’t blame her in the slightest and suggested that they sit down and chat until her wayward cousin stopped being an arse and taking his boredom out on other people.
But he couldn’t, not just then, not facing the highly perilous, friendship-trashing thoughts and feelings that were whirling around in his mind, that had been ever since she had irrationally hurled accusations and one astounding admission at him on a forest path moments after he had rescued her from four Death Eaters and a large clump of Devil’s Snare in a lonely folly in Shropshire. And now, with what he had just heard her say…
This whole business was her fault. Entirely.
She had to put the idea there, didn’t she? She had to put the thought into his head. And then to discuss the whole sorry mess with an inanimate Charmed object within Extendable Earshot of Sirius bloody Black and himself…
He became aware that her eyes were upon him once more, a little quizzical and apparently slightly confused that the usual platitudes had been less than forthcoming. He sighed.
Be nice, Lupin. That’s what you do, isn’t it…
“Do you always argue with your talking mirror like that?” he asked, rather wearily.
He felt a flash of guilt as Tonks cringed visibly. “Ummm… sometimes,” she admitted, her cheeks flushed and her eyes darting in every direction but his. “It helps, you know, to sort my head out sometimes.” Her eyes darkened slightly. “Though there are times that I’d happily take the seven years bad luck just to shut the ruddy thing up. Trust Sirius to give me the room with a mirror with darling Aunt Walburga’s attitude.”
He shouldn’t be so annoyed. Remus knew that. She hadn’t really done anything wrong, per sae, aside from putting highly inappropriate ideas into the head of a dirty old man and then discussing the prospect of said ideas coming to fruition at high volume with a piece of reflective glass. He couldn’t really blame her for that.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to.
“And you couldn’t have discussed it with a human being?” The words were almost plaintive. “Quietly? Elsewhere?”
Tonks’ flush deepened. “Tell someone else? Sweet Merlin, Remus, I haven’t even been able to talk about it with you!”
“Which, I think, is what we’re doing here.” Sighing again, Remus moved towards her, dropping into one of the two chairs by the fire as he wiped one weary hand over his face and took a moment to pray for the swift release of death. “Because even with Christmas coming, Sirius has nothing better to do than interfere in other people’s…”
Not love lives. He was not going to say love lives.
Because he didn’t have a love life. Indeed, the odds of him having much of a love life at any point in the future were roughly analogous with the chances of Kreacher greeting him on the doorstep of a sparkling Grimmauld Place one morning with a broad smile and a steaming, tasty steak and kidney pie. In spite of the hearty speculations his mind had recently taken to indulging in, it wasn’t going to happen.
Don’t say loves lives. Just don’t. That’s a hell of a can of worms to open while locked in a library with an attractive young woman who…
No. Stop that.
But no alternative term was forthcoming and he could feel the unspoken words hanging heavily like a smoggy shroud as he heard Tonks deposit herself in the chair at his side and let out a long, drawn out breath.
“Sirius is an interfering git,” he heard her proclaim.
Glancing up from the safe concealment of his hand, Remus risked a tentative smile. “Now that at least we can agree on.”
Perhaps a revised consideration of the circumstances was in order. It was Tonks’ fault. But it was also very, very much Sirius Black’s fault too.
It would have blown over. He was sure of it. After all, it had only been a dream and dreams were irrational, inconsequential things. What did it matter that she had admitted to a dream in which they had kissed? Logically, he was sure that it couldn’t really mean anything that she had taken so much trouble to interpret possible meanings of the dream and of course, how else was he supposed to read her irrational anger with him over it but as embarrassment, discomfort, possibly even revulsion at the prospect? They were friends after all and there was no reason that their friendship should be in any way altered by what were, as Sirius would have it, no more than random firings of her sleeping brain.
And the fact that the subject had been broached in such a memorable manner was, of course, entirely the reason that the random firings of his brain had returned the favour the following night and envisioned him sweeping her into his arms on the very forest path where they had spoken and kissing the poor girl senseless.
Dream Tonks had rather seemed to like it. Dream Remus had definitely been in favour. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the coming of morning, Dream Remus would certainly have been all for the idea of taking the matter somewhat further…
Real Remus had been somewhat more prosaic. There was no point in imagining things that weren’t going to be, whether or not the idea, now planted, held a distinct and definite appeal. It wasn’t going to happen.
But the next time he saw her, he found himself wondering - had the same thoughts crossed her mind the morning after? Was it possible that she could also find a certain appeal in that idea? Or was the entire business so utterly revolting to her that she was quietly hoping and praying that the prospect would never rear its head again?
A part of him - the masochistic part, he suspected - wanted answers to those questions, was willing to weigh the risk of humiliation, lost friendship and exposure as a dirty old werewolf lusting after a lovely, intelligent, funny young Auror against the possible gains said young Auror had to offer. The rest of him, though rounding on his mind for being a bit of a pervert, was rather more content to enjoy the idea in the silence of his thoughts and never allow grim reality to burst the bubble.
After all, it was a fantasy. In spite of her dream, she’d never seriously consider him romantically.
Would she?
So he had believed until the events of around ten minutes previously had shot his comfy mindset of happy denial straight out of the water.
Bloody Sirius. Bloody Sirius and his unerring nose for stirrable situations. James had suffered many an indignity in regards to his feelings for Lily over the years and Peter’s every crush was generally crushed within a couple of days by Padfoot’s intervention. More prone to keeping his head down, Remus had generally been the one to escape such censure until now, but when Sirius had, with painful inevitability, spotted that his old friend had been out of sorts and then, with aggravating tenacity, noted a similar trend in his young cousin, he had confronted Remus on the subject. And in a fit of utter madness for which he would probably never be able to forgive himself, Remus had confessed about everything.
He had fervently sworn Sirius to secrecy and insisted, on pain of death, that he was never to breathe a word of what he’d just admitted anywhere in the direction of Tonks. As though that was going to make a difference.
He should have realised then that he’d made a terrible mistake. To judge by past experience, he really should have known better. For unbeknownst to him, Sirius had made Plans; full on, carefully plotted, capital letter earning Plans. And those Plans had erupted all over Remus when he’d made the cardinal mistake of sitting and reading in quiet innocence in the library and allowed a maniacally grinning Padfoot to enter trailing two pieces of fleshy coloured string.
“Put this to your ear and listen up,” he’d told his old friend with a hint of a smirk. “I’ve found a way to get to the bottom of your Tonks issues.”
Remus had dropped the book and glared irritably. “How many times, Sirius? There are no Tonks issues! The poor girl is probably embarrassed enough without you…”
“Oh shut up, Moony.” Sirius’ command had been genial and friendly. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble for you. I overheard Tonks arguing with the talking mirror in her bedroom about a week ago - it used to be Mum’s, so it has a bad habit of spouting her special brand of tripe every so often and you know how Tonks would take to that. But anyway, it gave me an idea.” He had dropped in the chair at Remus’ side and shoved the Extendable Ear roughly into his hands. “I snuck into her room yesterday and Charmed said mirror so it’ll bring your name up the next to she looks in it. And then I planted the other end of these blighters in the hall outside her room. So once you’re mentioned, as you inevitably will be, you can find out once and for all whether you’ve got any chance of getting your furry little…”
“Enough.” It had seemed prudent to Remus to halt the flow of his friend’s words before they navigated all the way across the Oceans of Innuendo to make landfall on the coast of Crude. “Good God Sirius, that’s your cousin. And you’re spying on her…”
“Nope.” Sirius had grinned as he shoved his length of string into one ear - a flick of his wand had torn its reluctantly grasped companion away from Remus’ fingers and poked it uncomfortably into Remus’ left ear. “We’re spying on her.”
Remus had glared yet again. But even as he had reached up irritably to yank the offending eavesdropping device away, he had heard words that had frozen his hands in their tracks.
“What do you mean, I shouldn’t consort with half-breeds? I’ll consort with whatever half-breeds I bloody well choose! ”
He had seen the smirk spreading across Sirius’ face. He had heard his own brain demanding that he remove the listening device immediately, flee from the temptations brought before him by an evil-minded and highly bored animagus and go back to the safety of the land of denial where he belonged. But his fingers had inexplicably refused to obey.
“I dreamed about him! I dreamed about snogging him and you know what? It was good! I liked it! I enjoyed it! I might even fancy trying out the real thing sometime, you snooty, stuck up waste of glass! Maybe he is older than me and a werewolf and my friend, but he’s not bad looking and he’s funny and kind and…and yeah! Yeah, if he was interested, I reckon I’d go for it! Hell, I’d snatch his hands off and kiss him until his lips fell off, so there! You can shut up, you bloody thing! I think Remus Lupin’s fantastic and you can go to whatever hell is for Charmed prejudiced bloody mirrors! Okay?”
Okay…
He wasn’t entirely sure how long he had spent staring blankly into the fire in stunned and vaguely reverent silence after he had finally managed to pull the revelatory piece of string from his ear. He wasn’t sure either how long he had spent lost in a mind half torn between Dream Remus’ celebratory I-told-you-so jigs of triumph and Real Remus’ quiet, daunted horror at the idea that he might actually now have to step up and do something about it.
Because things like this didn’t happen to him. They just didn’t. Attractive women who knew of his condition did not bawl their interest in him at inanimate objects. They did not dream about kissing him and tell him so. They did not peak his interest and lead him to suspect he might be falling for them when there was a chance in hell of it actually going somewhere.
It wasn’t normal. It just wasn’t.
Just as she wasn’t normal. She had crashed through his protective walls and barricades, built up by years of squandered hope, first with friendship and now with… what? Why did she have to complicate what had been a perfectly good friendship with such things? Why did she have to be so much like everything he’d never known he’d wanted?
It was around that point that Remus Lupin had decided that the entire business was completely the fault of Nymphadora Tonks.
But it had been then and only then that he had come to another realisation.
It was quiet. Unnaturally so.
Where were the jokes? The innuendos? The remarks on his condition made in the worst possible taste?
He had looked up. Sirius was gone.
A heavy feeling of utter doom had weighed deeply within Remus’ chest. Oh no…
And a moment later, the doom had been justified. He had heard footsteps in the hall outside and then two voices he had certainly not wished to hear in tandem emerged discussing things he had definitely not wanted to hear them say.
“What can I say? I heard you yelling my best mate’s name at a talking mirror and I couldn’t help but be curious. Why don’t you nip into the library and wait while I get some tea from the kitchen? Then we can have a proper chat…”
Oh no, oh Sirius, don’t you bloody dare…
But it had been too late. Even as Remus had risen from his chair, insanely desperate to forestall what he knew was coming, Tonks had crossed the threshold, her eyes widening at the sight of him, just as Sirius, grinning like a fiend, had reached out and slammed the door shut. The flash of spellwork had rapidly followed.
They had shouted at him, of course. Remus hadn’t actually realised until that moment just how much of his former dorm-mates’ more inventive language he had absorbed over those seven years at Hogwarts. But Sirius had been unrepentant as ever, declaring that they clearly needed to chat about some things and that if they were good boys and girls, he’d let them out by dinnertime. And then, for good measure, he had told Tonks that Remus had also overheard ever word she’d said. And then he’d buggered off.
Remus had resolved in that moment that by whatever means he had at his disposal, he was going to get through that door and reduce Sirius Black to nothing more than a smouldering stain on the floor. There would be pain, dismemberment and possibly something involving a plate of stale dog biscuits, a couple of rabid doxies and a small aubergine. But at the same time, he had found himself dwelling upon the fact that he wouldn’t have been in this sorry mess, he wouldn’t have had to be plotting the gruesome death of his ex-best friend, if Nymphadora ruddy Tonks hadn’t shouted at him so adorably on a forest path and put ideas in his head that made him susceptible to Siriusness in the first place.
Her fault. Entirely.
And even as his irrational and uncharitable thoughts about how to blame she was for this mess surged upwards, a red-faced and cringingly embarrassed Tonks had retreated to the fireplace to die of apparent embarrassment in peace.
And now here they were, sat side by side in their respective chairs in front of the library fire facing a conversation that both parties had been avoiding with a fervour bordering on obsession for more than two weeks already.
The silence that followed was epic. It echoed. It resounded. It deafened and roared and rang and all the other awkward things that long and epic silences did when they were supposed to just keep silent. Remus considered speaking, clearing his throat, coughing, even feigning a sneeze in order to break it, but the consequences of such an act would be conversation and that was too horrific to contemplate.
Ruddy coward, Dream Remus whispered. Good boy, said the rest of him. Perhaps if they sat in silence for long enough, Sirius would come and let them out without a single word having to be exchanged…
But in the end, Tonks’ bravery levels outweighed the trickling away of her patience. Her voice stepped into the profoundness of the silence and banished it away.
“You really heard all those things I said?” she managed, her voice rich with doom-laden uncertainly. “About…”
She waved an absent hand, her cheeks red. There was no real need to finish the sentence. Both present knew to what she was referring.
Was this better than the silence? As Remus nodded with resignation, he wasn’t sure. “Every word. But I wouldn’t have even been listening if Sirius hadn’t…”
Tonks didn’t seem particularly interested in any further abuse of her cousin, apparently more preoccupied with the other, looming issue that hulked over them both. “We’re going to have to talk about this, aren’t we?” she remarked wearily, twisting the hem of her sleeve over and over between her fingers.
Remus sighed deeply. “I think we are.”
“This is going to be excruciating, isn’t it?”
Well that was certainly to the point. “I strongly suspect so.”
“Bloody Sirius.” Tonks stared viciously into the fire for a moment. “Well, I guess I’d better start since… well… what I said after what happened at Hawkestone Folly…”
“Yes.” With a distinct lack of Gryffindor courage, Remus was more than happy to let the Auror steer through the murky waters of this conversation. “Quite.”
Tonks swallowed hard. “I dreamed about you. About kissing you.” It sounded as though every word was being forced out of her throat. “And that’s why I was asking about dreams and stuff because I was worried about what it might mean… I mean, for our friendship…”
“Of course.” Friendship. That was what mattered here. Their friendship.
“And then I got all worked up and mad while I was stuck and somehow I decided it was your fault I got into that mess…”
“I remember.” He did. Vividly. The look of furious, irrational, adorable irritation on her face had featured quite prominently in the early stages of his own…
Stop it!
“And then I was yelling at you and it was stupid and I never meant to blame you out loud or mention some stupid dream that probably meant nothing at all…”
“Random firings of the brain.” The words were as much for his own benefit as hers.
“Yeah, exactly. But then…” The twisting of her sleeve intensified. “I found myself wondering… but we’re friends and it’d be so weird… “
Weird was not an encouraging word. But Remus knew he didn’t want encouraging words, he wanted to preserve their friendship, maintain things the way they were supposed to be…
Didn’t he?
Yes. Yes, yes, yes…
Make a joke. Make light of it. Relieve some of this blasted awkward tension, give her a dignified way out…
He forced a smile that felt as false as it probably looked. “You, know, given the competition around here, with Bill and Kingsley and the like… Well, I’m quite flattered to have featured. It’s a compliment really. And your defence of me in the face of the vicious attack by your mirror was most gratifying, though obviously you got a little carried away…”
Was it just in the deluded part of his mind that belonged to Dream Remus that he saw a flicker of disappointment cross her face?
“Yeah,” she muttered absently. “Yeah, carried away. That mirror was bloody annoying.”
“It belonged to Sirius’ mother. He thinks it might have inherited some of her views. Charmed mirrors can do that sometimes.”
“Hmmm.” Tonks was avoiding his eyes once more. “Well, I’m sorry… you know, if I embarrassed you or anything…”
“Sirius will have a field day.” Remus allowed himself a genuinely rueful smile, which she returned. “But like I said - to me, it’s a compliment.”
Tonks smiled wanly. “So… I guess… we’re sorted?”
It didn’t feel sorted. Nothing felt sorted. At that particular moment, Remus had to admit to himself that things felt about as sorted as one of Mundungus Fletcher’s store rooms, even worse in fact than they had been in the unspoken world of the last two weeks as they had both pretended that nothing whatsoever had happened. But they ought to feel sorted, he needed to make them feel sorted, because this was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? To find a safe and reasoned way in which to withdraw from something that obviously couldn’t spread out of daydreams and over-eager mirror arguments into reality? And that was what he’d got.
So why did he feel like crawling into a corner? Why did he feel as though he was going to have to cringe and hide every time he crossed her path in the future?
I didn’t want that. I can’t let it be like that! Friendly, be friendly and it’ll all be forgotten in the end…
He made himself smile again. “Of course.”
“Good.” She was smiling along with him now. Never mind that he had never seen a more forced looking smile in his life - she was smiling and so it was fine.
After all, what else could they do?
It was after about ten seconds of the most excruciating exchange of smiles that Remus could ever recall that Tonks abruptly snapped.
“Oh bollocks, Remus!” she exclaimed abruptly. “It’s not sorted! Nothing’s bloody sorted and we both know it! Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Fake smiles and awkward tension? If we leave it like this, our friendship will be shot!”
She was right. Of course she was right. “I know.” Remus sighed as he forced himself to be candid. “But what else can we do? I mean we can’t…”
“Yeah.”
“It’d be…”
“Weird. Yeah.”
“And if it didn’t work out between us…”
“The friendship’s shot whatever.” Tonks echoed his sigh. “So we can’t go forwards but we can’t go back. And we ruddy well can’t stay like this.” She glanced up at him, dark eyes meeting his with both trepidation and the same strange anticipation he’d noticed earlier.
“So how about this?” Her voice almost seemed to tremble slightly. “How about we just… kiss?”
For a moment, Remus was certain he’d misheard. In fact, he briefly suspected that Dream Remus had ruthlessly commandeered his ears for nefarious purposes of his own. “Pardon?”
Tonks took a gulping breath. “We just…kiss,” she repeated, waving one hand in loose, absent circles in the air. “I mean, that’s the problem, isn’t it? The whole kiss-dream thing. It put the idea there when we both know it’s daft but it’s not going to go away until we…well, do something about it. So we just kiss. One kiss, to clear the air, get this stupid business out of both of our systems. And then after that, we can laugh it off and get back to normal.”
Remus hesitated. He had to admit that, even once Dream Remus had been clubbed repeatedly into silence, the idea had merits. It would be a resolution. The end of it all. The air would be clean and clear between them.
It would be a kiss.
One kiss.
He could do that.
“Well.” He swallowed hard. “That seems like a…reasonable suggestion.”
Tonks nodded almost frantically. “Yeah. It’s good. So…” The random hand was waving once more, in some frantic, incomprehensible series of gestures. “How do you reckon… I mean we could stand up or…I mean, we could sit on the rug down there…”
Remus wasn’t sure that standing was going to be a very good idea for reasons too embarrassing to air out loud. “The rug would probably be more…practical.”
“Good. Okay.” Breathing hard, Tonks lifted herself out of her chair and deposited herself on the rug beside the fire. After a moment to compose himself and to club Dream Remus one final time for good measure, Remus eased himself down to join her.
Her face, caught in the light of the flickering fire, was pale and strangely nervous.
“So,” she said almost jovially. “Should… should we hold each other or…?”
“Maybe if I put my hand…” Remus lowered his fingers carefully, almost delicately onto her left shoulder and tried to ignore the disconcerting sense of the heat of her warm skin beneath the jumper she was wearing. “And the other…” He caught hold of her right elbow. “For balance,” he clarified with a jerk of his fingers.
“And I’ll…” He felt her hands come to rest gently, tentatively, against his waist, little more than a fingertip touch but it was enough to make Remus wish his robes were a great deal less threadbare. “There. Okay?”
Remus could only pray that she could not feel the frantic pounding of his heartbeat that was sounding alarmingly like Dream Remus playing a drum-roll in his ears. “I think so.”
Tonks gave a desperate little laugh. “So I guess we’re ready… I mean, I’m ready, if you’re…”
“I’m ready.”
“Good.”
“Great.”
“So… shall we…?”
“Do you want me to…?”
“Yeah. Yeah, if you want to…”
“As long as you want me to.”
“Yep, that’d be best.”
“And you’re still sure you want to do this?”
“Clear the air, Remus.”
“Right. Clear the air.”
“On three?”
“And I’ll… start it?”
“Yeah, so… On three. One, two…”
Three.
Remus fought to restrain himself as his lips brushed against hers, as he felt their warmth, their gentle caress, the magical feel of something he had only ever thought he’d dream of. But he couldn’t, he wouldn’t indulge himself or his selfish desires - this kiss was to restore friendship, to clear the air, to get these stupid ideas out of his system once and for all and however much he yearned to part her lips, to deepen the kiss, to slip into desperate passion and lose himself as completely as his dream self had, he simply could not allow it.
For a few moments longer, they tentatively explored each other lips, gently, carefully, almost deliberately, their fingers flexing awkwardly against each other’s bodies as though unsure exactly what the parameters for an air-clearing kiss really were. But then, slowly, he eased his lips away from hers and pulled himself away.
There. You see? You did it. Nice and safe. And now everything will be back to normal…
He opened his eyes.
And nothing was normal at all.
Tonks’ dark-eyed gaze was fixed upon him, her heart-shaped face flushed as she breathed heavily, her chest rising and falling sharply with the motion as she forced herself to smile.
“There,” she said with cheer as false as before. “Isn’t that better?”
No. No, it wasn’t bloody well better. It wasn’t enough…
But it had to be. It just had to be.
That was all he was allowed to have.
One kiss. And it was over.
“Yes,” he managed with faux relief. “Much.”
“All done.”
He ought to let go of her now. And she really ought to be letting go of him…
“Out of our systems.”
Her eyes seemed burn against him, her pink, slightly puffy lips tempting to come back again, come back for more…
“We’ve cleared the air.”
Gods, her face was still so close and so flushed, and he’d done that, he’d done that to her…
“The air is clear.”
He barely managed to speak the words and they were desperate, desperate lies. How could he ever have believed that this would be a good idea, that one single kiss would ever be enough?
She was hovering now, her mouth a mere inch from his, her breath ticking his lips almost agonisingly. “We can be friends again.”
“Just…” Her lips brushed his, just slightly, just gently, almost faltering his words. “Just… friends…”
And then the inevitable happened. Fervently.
There was nothing tentative about their second kiss, nothing restrained or careful as their lips crashed down upon each other, his hands caressing her arms, her shoulders, her back as he felt her fingers grasp his waist, pulling him closer and he made no effort to resist as her lips parted and oh glory…
Coherent thought was no longer an option. Lost in the world that was Tonks, Remus was vaguely aware that he was being nudged and lowered downwards, that his back was now flat against the rug and her body was resting, was pressing dow over his as her hands ventured magnificently into exploration of what lay below…
And then, swallowed by passion, by glorious lips and magnificent hands, Remus Lupin knew nothing but her.
And Dream Remus, having put down his drums, stepped up and moved into reality.
* * *
After a moment or two’s contemplation, Sirius Black decided that he could probably take the repeated squelching of lips and one heavy thud of two collapsing bodies as a sign that his work in that library was done. Grinning to himself, he plonked his feet up on the kitchen table as he pulled the fleshy piece of string from his ear and took a hefty swig of firewhiskey.
I knew it.
Sweet Merlin, those two could be thick. He’d been all but able to taste the tension between them even before Moony had owned up to Tonks’ confession and his own night time taster sessions of the whole hog he was now apparently experiencing upstairs. And as for clearing the air…
He allowed himself a smirk. Unless he was very much mistaken, by the time he went up to release Moony and his cousin, the air would be so clear it would sparkle. And if they decided to be prats about it…
Well. There were plenty more lockable rooms in the house. And if they forced him into action, well he could hardly be held to blame for trying to help, now could he?
There was simply no doubt about it, no deliberation or debate. If they forced him into action again, it would be entirely the fault of Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks...