Me In Honey
He lies in bed next to Tonks and wonders what Molly will say. He wants to laugh. She's been pushing them at each other since before they even met, though he still says he's too old, Tonks too young.
He wonders what Sirius would have said, replaced in Remus's bed by his own cousin.
Tonight, her hair was the shocking blue of the Aegean on a sunny summer day, and her eyes the green of Ireland's rolling hills.
There is something strangely thrilling about sleeping with a woman who is a hundred different women in appearance, yet still smells and feels the same.
Remus likes women. He likes the curves and hidden valleys of their bodies, the contrast of tender, yielding flesh over firm muscle and intractable bone. He likes the soft warmth of a woman pressed against his own sharp, unyielding form -- he is skin and bone, even after a year of Molly's cooking -- and he enjoys the illusion of fragility masking strength; the need to dominate in a tense standoff with the urge to protect.
With Sirius, it was all planes and angles, and ferocious, desperate power. He was forever in danger of being pulled under by a storm-tossed sea.
With Tonks, he's drowning in honey, slow and sticky sweet, with just a hint of spice.
He knows this will not last; it probably shouldn't even have begun. He's too old and scarred to open himself to her, and she is almost as skilled as he is at hiding.
He runs a gentle finger down her nose. Her real nose. Her real hair, lips, face, body. Black hair, lashes dark against milky pale skin, full pink lips -- it hurts to look at her, and it hurts not to.
In sleep, she lets him see herself.
But all he sees is Sirius.