"Sod off."

"Is that how you talk to a lady?"

Remus rolled over and glared at Tonks in the flicker of the fire. "Is that what you are today? A lady?"

"Better than a bourbon-soaked werewolf." She grabbed the duvet and pulled it off of him. "A mourning bourbon-soaked werewolf."

He grabbed for the covers too late and managed to sit up to hide as much of his body as he could by curling in on himself. "Go away." His voice was strangled and pained.

"Merlin," she whispered in a rush of air. She knelt down beside the bed and reached out, her fingers trailing over the skin pulled tight over his ribs, the slivers of silver that criss-crossed his flesh.

"Go away."

She ignored his command and moved onto the bed, one hand following the patterns as the other gripped his shoulder and turned his body, easing him back onto the bed. She could see the unsteady swallow as he complied, resigned, as she ran her fingers over the flat plane of his stomach, threading them through dark hair turning gray.

"Had enough?"

She looked up at him finally then looked back down, unwilling to share the emotions she knew were in her eyes. "Do you miss him so dreadfully?" Her voice was as soft as her fingers as she moved them up to his chest, no longer tracing so much as stroking his skin. "Or are you mourning something more than Sirius."

His body jerked slightly at the question, so obviously not one so much as a statement, a knowing. "He never got a chance at life."

"From the stories you tell and the ones you don't, he lived more in his time before Azkaban than most people do in a lifetime."

"And that's makes him an acceptable loss?"

"That means this isn't about Sirius at all." She laid her hand flat on his stomach, feeling the heat of his skin and the flutter of his nervousness. She met and held his gaze for a long movement, waiting for him to speak again.

"It should have been me. Both times. Not James and Lily. Not Sirius. I'm cursed and I'm broken and if it had been me…"

"If it had been you, what would I do with myself?" She smiled slightly and went on, not waiting for him to respond. "Who would I torture every morning? Whose lazy bones would I have to shift out of bed? Who would I force my abominable tea on?" Her hand slid down to the base of is cock and rested there, feeling the swell against her hand as he inhaled. "We all mourn James and Lily and Sirius, Remus. But not a one of us, even Harry, would want it to have been you in their place."

"It's a seductive lie."

"I don't have to lie to be seductive." She curved her hand around his cock, leaning in slightly to limit his vision to just her. "It's seductive because you want to believe it. It gives you an excuse not to go on living. But you will go on living." Her hand began moving, stroking him slowly. "Even if I have to do this every morning to keep your heart pumping."

Remus huffed out a soft laugh. "Do you get hazard pay?"

"No," she assured him as she leaned further, closing the distance between them, whispering her words against his parted lips. "I reap other benefits."