Missing

Missing

They sit together by the fireplace, close to the hearth in the little Dorset cottage; he in the maroon overstuffed armchair, she at his feet. Outside it is still an August summer's evening; on the surface the light breeze is warm but there is an underlying chill in the air that foretells the coming winter. He is reading; she rests her neon-pink hair against his leg to watch the flames crackle and pop through the grate.

Her head snaps up at the dry rasp of paper above her as he turns the page; his brows furrow slightly in concentration behind his glasses, the frown deepening the lines around his eyes and mouth. The flickering flames cast a burnished glow to his greying hair, ghosting shadows on his thin face; in this light he is from another world, and beautiful to her adoring eyes.

Remus turns another page with an almost inaudible sigh. Tonks wishes he would read out loud to her, for there is too much silence in this house, in this room tonight. The quiet hangs heavy over her, muffling her with its loudness even as her ears catch all the small sounds of scrabbling ants and rustling leaves outside.

Or she could read out loud to him, to save his voice; mind you, it is only two days past the full moon and he is still hoarse from howling. She could reach out--but something in the set of his jaw prevents her from taking the book from his hands. Instead, subdued, she turns to look at the flames, and wonders what he is missing.

It is not that Tonks cannot give.

On the contrary, Tonks gives all she can.

She is free with her smiles, her embraces, her kisses; her naked body under him is nothing but an open invitation to take, quivering with delight as he does, gliding his long hands over her breasts, under her hips. She gives him her pleasure, free with her love and her sound when she comes is pure joy reverberating through hushed air. She is more than eager to give with her lips and hands and talented tongue; it is her triumph when he comes, release is what she gives him.

She knows too, it is not that Remus cannot give.

For Remus does give; when his lips trail along her collarbone and down her belly; when he traces her curves and tongues her warm wet softness until she can no longer stand it; when he whispers sweet words of encouragement to her as she arches against him, her body consumed in his heated touch. He gives as he fills her thick and tight, as he shudders and completes her in that moment.

Strangely, she thinks, perhaps it is more that Remus can no longer receive.

What he can no longer receive, she doesn't know. Remus won't say; she has never asked.

All she knows is that is a subtle distinction, and one she cannot fathom, but it is there nonetheless.

He is grateful after he comes, though he does not yell, or moan her name; he sighs, or swallows, oddly distant even in this ultimate closeness. He holds her close against his heart as she falls asleep to the steady drumming in her ear, but he never holds her through the night. They wake apart, as if his arms have learned her own clumsiness of movement, unable to fit their bodies together; as if he were instinctively searching for planes, not curves.

He never says she completes him the way he does her.

She begins to wonder, if perhaps she can't. Or if maybe she never could.

Now Tonks feels the weight of his hand come to rest on her head, and she closes her eyes as he caresses her spiky hair. She could be content to stay suspended in this moment forever; because this is the only time now, she realizes, with his fingers threading absently through her hair in the shrouded silence, that Remus seems closest to the man she thought she knew--when he seems closest to himself.