Tonks (doratheauror) wrote in disorderic, @ 2017-10-29 23:26:00 |
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Entry tags: | nymphadora lupin, remus lupin |
WHO: Remus and Tonks
WHAT: First kiss and a lot of cuteness
WHEN: Winter 2015
WHERE: Tonks' old London flat
Tonks came to a stop in front of her building after apparating to a discrete alley, Remus at her side. The London street was as quiet as it ever was, which was to say, not very; Tonks’ street was mainly residential, but even at this hour there were still people milling either to or back home from a night out. She and Remus likely blended into that crowd, though trailing Death Eaters probably wasn’t most people’s idea of a fun night. It wasn’t really Tonks’ idea of a fun night either, and yet, that seemed to be how she spent most of her Saturday nights ever since she joined the Order. Walking home with Remus had become another new routine of hers, though there was truly no necessity for it; for one thing, spying on Death Eaters was infinitely more dangerous than her neighborhood, and yet...she didn’t exactly let him walk her home because she felt frightened, and, truthfully, there was a part of her that thought Remus wasn’t just trying to be polite either, rather that he perhaps joined her for the same reason she always agreed to his company; because she enjoyed the conversation and having an excuse to spend even just ten minutes with him without some mission or the entire Order hanging around. Usually, it always just stopped here, in front of her building. “Well…” she began, and the appropriate thing would have been to bid him goodnight, as usual. This was her colleague, after all, and she didn’t relish the thought of taking moonlit walks with Moody or Kingsley, so she was already petering on the edge of a blurred line here--but Tonks wasn’t very good at kidding herself. She didn’t want to say goodbye. She never really did. Tonks ran her fingers through her dark blue pixie cut as she hesitated, then finally just put it out there--the worst he could say was no thanks, after all. “I was thinking, would you like to come in for a bit? For tea or something?” There was wine, too, but Tonks thought maybe that was pushing it. These evening walks had often been Remus’ own way of instilling order within his contribution to their increasingly smaller band of vigilantes. As his senses heightened surrounding the waxing of the moon, he could often sense danger before it occurred and it seemed appropriate to have him on a rotation. It was also, he could later admit to himself when separated by time and a good cup of a coffee, a good excuse to spend time with Nymphadora Tonks. He’d laughed harder than he had since before James and Sirius taught him how to smile again. And he’d opened his heart a little wider than he’d been comfortable, even before having ever laid eyes on Lily Evans. And with all the years between the memories, it was good to smile and to laugh. To talk through the little details of life with such zest. … and to walk not as a solitary creature, peering into the windows that became the set pieces for all of those gloriously domestic scenes. But to have someone who watched, who saw, and who talked with him. So when she asked him in, his instinct kicked it before his good sense could. “Twist my arm, won’t you just.” Tonks grinned, “Well, thanks for indulging me,” she teased. One of the things she liked best about Remus was how he talked, how he played with words; it was rarely a simple “alright” or a “no.” When Tonks led him into her flat and turned on the lights, though, she reflected that the problem with spontaneity was that it left her with precious little time to pretend she was someone she wasn’t--like someone who didn’t leave books and papers on every conceivable surface or her Auror robes wrinkled and crumpled in the corner of the couch after having used them as a blanket after work (she had been tired, okay). “So, uh, welcome!” Tonks said, her eyes darting fervently to all the clutter, slightly askance as if how could it do this to her. Apart from that, though, the space was warm and bright and Tonkses and Andromedas and Teds and friends waved in greeting at the two of them from their frames; one including Tonks in those same scarlet robes, this time immaculately pressed as she stood with her trainee class in front of the Fountain of Magical Brethren. She hoped they might distract Remus as she tried to do something about the rest of it. “Scourgify!” Tonks murmured, directing her wand at the clutter. Thing was, she was never very good at these spells, since she rarely bothered with them. Some of the books merely twitched and then fell right back into place. The rest of it formed a leaning tower of junk in the center of the coffee table, the robes--to their credit--settled on top of it all as if to hide it from view. It still wasn’t exactly what she’d been going for. “Right, so I’ll just…” Tonks began, then levitated the pile behind the couch and turned back to Remus, grinning still, but slightly embarrassed. “So what would you like? I’ve got Earl Grey, Jasmine, Darjeeling, Breakfast tea...there’s also coffee and wine,” Tonks added, deciding to throw caution to the wind there. “I’ll have what you’re having.” Remus said easily, sitting on the edge of one of the sofa cushions as he took a quick look round her flat. Tidy except when it came to his books, Remus could understand that a cluttered room illustrated a complex mind. Tonks certainly had a lot going, besides. He had no place to judge. “It all sounds like something I would drink.” Then, he sat back and crossed a leg over his knee. They had been good at conversation within the environment of their working space. But here, in her own home, he realized he was feeling mildly panicked. How to maintain that same air of nonchalance and charm that he deployed when he really liked people? Because he really liked Tonks. He would not be in the middle of wiping his sweaty palms on his trousers if he did not. “Hmmmm.” Bullocks, Lupin. Time for small talk. He snorted at himself and lifted his eyes back to her. “This is a great neighborhood. Good space. Are you connected to the floo?” Tonks couldn’t help but smile a bit at that smallest of the small talk question, though she tried not to make her amusement too obvious--she was a far cry from feeling totally confident and at ease in this moment herself, though for some reason, she didn’t completely hate this particular variety of nerves. There was a sense of potential in them. She handed him a glass of red wine and set down some chocolate in the middle on the coffee table. “Thanks,” she said warmly. “And yep, it’s all connected,” Tonks informed him, taking a sip of her own wine before she flashed a wry smile, “How else would Scrimgeour and Moody be able to bother me at all hours in the privacy of my own home?” “That warrants a second thought. Disconnect immediately,” he smiled and said over the rim of his cup, taking an appreciative sip. Red wine had that same warmth as a cat’s belly - soft, inviting, and ultimately dangerous. He knew that they were dancing here. And he knew what he meant. But being so close to one this vital made him feel the years he left behind. So he threw caution to the wind and let his arm unfurl across the back of the couch with another sip. “It’s a nice flat. Just you here … ? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?” “Yeah, Moody yells at me for it everytime he uses it to bother me about something, anyway,” Tonks said wryly, but cast a doubtful glance over at the fireplace; she was used to tuning Moody’s paranoia out, but to hear it from Remus, who was a whole lot saner, made her worry for not the first time about what exactly she’d gotten herself into if these type of precautions were necessary. “I worry that it might look weird to Scrimgeour and other tech repellant Ministry types, though...maybe I could tell him it broke.” Tonks felt distinctly aware of his arm distantly from her shoulder, but honestly, unless this was an Austen novel it hardly counted as anything to get excited about. “Oh, nope, just me,” she said. “A roommate would be kind of tricky with the weird hours, and a lot of my mates are Aurors, so I couldn’t really blame it on that, since they’d know I was lying,” she said. “And I have neither a boyfriend nor a girlfriend.” “I’d thought a roommate, a boyfriend or a girlfriend could keep the home fires burning for an Auror,” he laughed. “But fair enough.” With another sip of wine, he placed the cup on the table and reached out to brush a lock of hair from her forehead. “There's something to be said for independence.” Tonks was Hyper Aware of the feeling of Remus’ fingers against her forehead, which was basically second base in the Austen novel her ridiculous brain had tricked herself into thinking they were in because seriously, this should not have been that big of a deal. And yet her expression betrayed her and she smiled, somewhat goofily, because ridiculous or not, the reality was she liked Remus quite a lot and the gesture had been cute. “Oh, yeah,” Tonks said after a beat. “I kind of like living on my own. Hogwarts was always fun, but the only child instincts are hard to shake,” she said. “But one of the three probably would be good for that, at least in the meantime I’ve a good excuse for the clutter,” she reasoned. “Completely understood, there. I am an only child as well and the only time I ever had roommates was at school.” His eyes narrowed. “Oh, I did live with Sirius for a few months too. But that was a very strange time in my life.” Not a good way to converse and lead along something marginally romantic, bringing up the family. His lip canted crookedly, as if to apologise for his gaffe. “Try Scourgify and mean it?” he suggested. “Or be happy, knowing your business is right within reach where you can find it. That’s what I tell myself when I look at my reading desk.” “What was strange about it?” Tonks asked, eager to get Remus talking about himself more, but feigning casualness as she stirred her wine in a way she thought would look sophisticated--instead, she was over vigorous with the wrist rotation and spilled a small wave of it on herself. “Two half-grown teen boys living in a big old house with some Black trust fund and a psychopath about.” And to model, like a good teacher, Remus removed his wand from his sleeve and gave a firm tap to the wine stain, whilst speaking the incantation. It was gone in an instant. He smiled at her question, though, and shook his head briefly. “That’s all you’re getting out of me. I made Sirius a promise not to talk out of school.” Tonks flashed a smile halfway between appreciation and embarrassment as he whisked away the stain without acknowledging it; Tonks had already proven her ineptitude with scourgify, and she’d been afraid of making a bad situation worse by replacing the wine stain with a hole or some other such nonsense. “Okay, but I want to know about this psychopathic extra roommate,” she said. “Was it Kreacher?” Tonks asked with a smirk. She didn’t really know if he’d have been around at this point in their lives, but when she thought about Black family psychos, her mind went straight to either the matriarch herself or the houself. Both the Black family and house elves were new to Tonks, and they both made her vaguely uncomfortable. Having not grown up with a house elf, Tonks hadn’t really known what to expect from one, but she was pretty sure she never learned anything in Care of Magical Creatures about their tendency to mutter bizarrely specific insults under their breath, which had been the sum total of her interactions with Kreacher thus far. “No. Kreacher stayed - at that time - in Grimmauld Place.” He paused, considering his words. This could go quite well -- or otherwise. He chose to keep his words light, brow arched. “The psychopath came about once a month. But we were quite lucky in that he spent his nights out of the house.” He leaned closer, a whisper from her lips as he smiled. “May I?” It took Tonks a moment to piece together Remus’ words that were very much like a riddle. A look of understanding flashed across her face; of course, she’d known Remus was a werewolf, but it was difficult to reconcile the word psychopath with her imagining of Remus all the same. Still, an objection felt like it would be undermining an experience that she really couldn’t presume to understand. And, anyway, she was thoroughly distracted by the next words out of his mouth. Tonks was flushed from both the wine and their proximity; she hadn’t really noticed how close they’d move together as they talked. “Yes,” she said, closing her eyes and leaning in and hoping to Helga that Remus was asking permission for what she thought he was asking permission for, and not simply because she’d gotten something else on herself. He lingered a moment longer before punctuating the minute silence with a gentle kiss. And then another; this one longer, with more warmth. He paused, letting his forehead rest against hers. It was time for a confession. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a while.” “Me too,” she admitted, meeting his eyes which were very close to her own now. She cupped his right cheek in her palm, still somewhat dazed from the kiss in a way she hadn’t felt since maybe her first kiss; though, that had been an awkward, uncertain thing with someone she hadn’t cared for as deeply as she’d tried to make herself believe. This, by contrast, had a depth and certainty she’d never felt before, and then there was the sheer surprise of it; though she had indeed thought about this before, she hadn’t exactly expected it would ever happen, since she also hadn’t exactly expected that Remus would return this little crush of hers, which no longer felt so little now that it no longer existed in her head and heart alone. |