Better To Have Loved - Part 2
I think I've eaten half the frontpage of this comm. I feel bad >.<
Title: Better To Have Loved
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13 except for # 9, which is mild R.
Pairing: Remus and Tonks
Summary: It's a shoebox full of snapshots, and here's the next ten of them.
- Who
“Come off it, Tonks. You’re so loopy even Dumbledore can’t get your attention. It’s a man, isn’t it? Only a man could do this to you. Is it Charlie? You went to school with him, right? Surprised you and him haven’t hooked up alread-”
“It’s not Charlie, Sirius.” Tonks growls through clenched teeth.
“Is it Bill? You better get over that one, cousin dear. He’s all over the Veela. You know how Veela are, always too preoccupied with themselves to care what poor saps start following ‘em around. Wonder how Bill bagged that one, come to think of it-”
“Oh for Merlin’s sake, I’m not in love with a Weasley!” she shouts, more loudly than she’d originally intended.
“So you are in love with someone!”
Oh bugger. Tonks decides it would be in her best interest not to answer, and Sirius begins gleefully rattling off the Official Order of the Phoenix List of Eligible Bachelors. He rules out Snape, himself, and Mundungus Fletcher before finally reaching the object of her affections.
“Remus?”
Her flaming face is all the evidence he needs, and for some reason, it’s apparently hilarious. “Moony! You’re mooning over Moony!”
- Circle
I love her, and I want to be with her.
Wanting to be with her puts her in danger.
It’s my fault she’s in danger, I need her to be safe.
To keep her safe I have to leave her.
I have to leave her because I love her.
I love her.
- Birthday
Tonks sinks into the overstuffed purple couch, hands raking through her hair. “Merlin, I thought they’d never leave.”
Remus’s hands knead into her shoulders, pressing the knots that had formed there during her (thoroughly unexpected) surprise party. “You know they all mean well, love,” he says, but his tone speaks quite clearly that he’s just as glad the remainder of the Order has finally trickled out.
“Yeah, well, we’ll see how much good meaning well does you when a whole mess of people Floo in while we’re snogging on your birthday.” She doesn’t bother morphing the red from her ears now that they’re alone. “Did you see Molly’s face when she caught me sprawled out on the couch on top of you? Blimey, I thought she’d burst a blood vessel.”
Remus winces. “Well, she does think of you as another daughter…”
“Good thing snogging was all we were doing. Could you imagine if my parents had shown up?”
Images of a blanching, scandalized Andromeda Black and a sputtering, ruddy-faced Ted Tonks swim before his eyes.
“Please don’t plant that thought in my head, Tonks. I’m scarred enough as it is.”
Her musical laugh rings through the flat as she pulls him down beside her. “Well, if it gets your mind off of my mother, I happen to be thinking about where we left off with that birthday present of yours…” She grins, and Remus catches her smile with his lips, happy to indulge in her much more appealing mental images.
- Sixth Sense
“What do you mean, ‘what’s the matter with me’? I’m perfectly content right as I am, thank you.”
“Something is definitely up, Moony, and I don’t mean it’s almost your time of the month.” Sirius gives Remus one long, appraising look, complete with a very Sirius-like stroke of the beard, before passing his judgment. “It’s my cousin, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Padfoot.” Remus says, a little too quickly to be true.
“Come off it, mate.” Sirius smirks, throwing one leg over the arm of his chair. “It is absolutely Tonks. I’ve known you three-quarters of my life. You couldn’t trick me even if I weren’t psychic.”
Remus gives him a look, then locks his gaze pointedly with the floor, fiddling with a loose thread on his armchair. “Half of which was spent in Azkaban. And you were crap at Divination.”
“Listen, you and I both know you’ve got it bad. And honestly, I think it’s about bloody time you got yourself laid.”
The glare shot in Sirius’ direction is indication enough that his comment does not exactly sit well with Remus.
“Alright, alright, you win. But be serious, man, she’s arse over teakettle-” Remus finds himself with a distinct mental image of Tonks dropping a pot of Earl Grey and falling down the stairs-“Get a good look at her next Order meeting. You’ll see what I mean.”
Remus sighs. “How did you know?”
“Told you before, mate,” Sirius grins, “I’m psychic.”
- Dinner
The photograph is snatched from his hands, and Remus grabs, desperate, after the gnarled claw lording it just out of reach.
“So this is the piece you left behind to join our little family, is it?” Greyback sneers, a mocking grin splitting his scarred face. “D’you miss her, Remus? Did she kiss it and make it all better after you’d changed back? She make you feel like a man again?” He spits the word “man,” spits it in the dust at Remus’ feet.
The disheveled pack joins in their Alpha’s sinister laugh. Bile rises in Remus’ throat.
“That’s enough, Fenrir. She’s long gone now.”
Revulsion twists the sneer into growl, and Greyback’s lip curls as the young woman in the photo leans over to press a kiss to her smiling love’s cheek. “Then you’d better forget her fast. Unless, of course, you plan on inviting her for dinner and some…friendly entertainment, eh, boys?”
The pack jeers in agreement as Greyback tears the photograph in two. “You’re no more a man than the rest of us, no matter who you had pretending with you.” He flings the pieces back in Remus’ face.
- Moon
“Bloody hell-!”
Remus wakes to the unmistakable sound of hiss and a stubbed toe, naked in his bed. His head pounds, worse than it usually does after a full moon. Didn’t he tell her to stay away when he was like this? His face burns; she shouldn’t have to see him in such a state. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, her frantic whispered apologies far too loud for post-transformation senses. But she’s left a steaming pot of potato soup on the fire, warm blankets draped over him, clean clothes folded at the foot of the bed, and a massive bar of chocolate on the bedside table; despite the previous night’s aches, he has to smile.
Tonks fidgets nervously with the tassels on her scarf. “Remus, I’m so sorry, I know I shouldn’t be here this soon, but I wanted to bring you a few things I thought might help you feel better. Maybe help ease you out of…of things. I’m leaving now, I promise. You need rest-”
He catches her hand.
“Please stay.”
- Smell
She sleeps in his pyjamas every night, wraps herself with the sweet soap-and-parchment smell of him. It soothes her frantic mind to sleep, stays the desperate hoping he’s survived another day, and just for a moment she doesn’t feel so painfully alone.
That smell is fading now. It’s been so long since he’d last slept beside her, so long since they’d last shared one set of pyjamas. She would wear the shirt over her knickers and Remus would keep the bottoms. Then he’d pull her against his bare chest and she would curl up close and breathe him in, would drift off feeling safe and loved and wanted night after night.
Tonks buries her face in the soft blue flannel and hopes he’s found someplace warm to sleep tonight.
- Home
“Stoppit! Put me down!” Tonks laughs, whacking him in the chest with her small - and now rather disheveled - bouquet. “It’s my flat! And I can walk in these shoes, I promise!”
Remus chuckles and kisses the tip of her nose. “But that would keep me from the first of my husbandly duties if I let you walk in on your own.” He sets her down just inside the door, leaving her fingers twined together at his nape. “S’bad luck.”
A smile curves the corners of her mouth, full bottom lip caught by her teeth. “Well, I suppose it is our flat now, isn’t it?” The backs of his fingers skim her cheek, drawing their faces together.
“That it is, Mrs. Lupin,” Remus murmurs. One hand brushes just underneath the hem of her dress; his eyes are dark, dusky with gentle desire as she tangles her fingers in his hair. Tonks smiles against his mouth and nudges the door shut.
- Dark
He’s thankful for the darkness. It keeps her from seeing how far he’s fallen.
But see him she does. With lips and hands and skin as she cradles his hips against her own. Splays her small fingers across his back. Feathers kisses along the sharp lines of his neck, his collarbone, the inside of his wrists. As if she could heal him from the shadows of the life he’s since adopted. He tangles his fingers in her hair, holding a lingering kiss to his throat and rolls her onto her back, his weight settling comfortably, perfectly, over her lithe frame. Her legs draw him closer and he is gentle as they twine into each other.
There is no trace of the wolf here, no vestige of the feral brute he’s been while dry lips trace soft, flushed skin. He feels her every shiver, every sigh of his name, his messy fringe trailing patters at the dip below her throat. Velvet eyes meet his as she arches into him, gives herself so freely, holds and loves and trusts the very beast that almost destroyed her. He takes of what she offers, starving for all the things he should have been the one to lay at her feet. Takes advantage. Thieves from her that which he is not man enough to give.
There is no man left.
Guilt constricts his insides. He can steal no more of her, and pushes her away.
- Choices
“Remus, wait, please.”
God, how he wants to pull her close. He wants so badly to kiss away the glassy sparkles in her eyes, slide his hands beneath the sheets she’s wrapped around herself and tell her all this pain was a mistake. Instead he has to turn his face away.
“There’s nothing left for you here.” His unused voice is rough, cracked. He’s thankful the doorframe he leans upon holds under what’s left of his weight.
“Don’t say that. Dumbledore’ll come to his senses. You’ll be able to leave these-”
“These what, Tonks? These beasts?”
“Remus, you know I didn’t mean it like-”
Shame pulses through him like molten lead. “It was all a farce, thinking I could have a life with you. A game of pretend,” he rasps, “…at being a man.”
Silence stretches between them. He can feel her eyes on his back.
“Do you love me?”
His blood runs cold. She stands there, threadbare sheets clutched to her bare chest. Naked and shivering and vulnerable, but unfaltering. Still trusting after all he’s put her through.
“I did, Nymphadora. More than anything.”
A/N: My inspiration for # 9 (and, consequently, 10 here as well) came heavily from philotic-net's piece "Whatever Colors You Have", which I found here on deviantart: http://philotic-net.deviantart.com/art/Whatever-Colors-You-Have-112047866 and the Bob Dylan song "Lay Lady Lay" she based it on. It happens to be the *only* Bob Dylan song I like :) Numbers 9 and 10 of this set are I believe the first of only two pairs of drabbles that will be in chronoligical order. Also, # 5 of this set is one of my favorites ouf of the...69 of these drabbles I've finished so far, in case anyone was wondering :3 Fenrir is delightfully despicable. And again, if there's anything you guys think I should have done differently or if something is glaringly wrong, please please please let me know! Thanks, and I hope you liked these ten!