Fic: Earth's Embrace (Remus/Tonks)
Title: Earth’s Embrace
Author: jedi_penguin
Recipient: wildwinterwitch
Pairing: Remus/Tonks
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Remus doesn’t mind Tonks’s clumsiness.



Only a fool or a man in love would go mountain climbing with Nymphadora Tonks. Scrambling over rocks, ducking the pebbles she kept dislodging onto his head, and picking her up every few minutes, Remus knew himself to be both. Not there that weren’t compensations to being a fool in love with Tonks. Looking up Tonks’s shapely arse as she led the way up the mountain was hardly a disagreeable way to spend a weekend in Remus’ estimation.

When Tonks lost her balance for the dozenth time since lunch, Remus stifled a grin and scrambled over to help her up. And if his hands lingered a bit longer than necessary over the curves of her beautiful body, well, Tonks wasn’t complaining.

“Are you all right, Nymphadora?” he asked solicitously.

“It’s Tonks,” she snapped automatically and without heat. This argument had lost all its steam long ago, but they would both miss the game were Remus to ever stop teasing her. “And I’m fine. Just a bit… dirty.”

Remus grinned at the way she said “dirty” but then schooled his face into a more serious expression. “I’ll just clean you up then, shall I?”

Not waiting for a response, Remus began brushing the dirt off her. Since he chose to start with her bottom and chest, it wasn’t a surprise when she leaned over to kiss him. After a moment she broke away to murmur, “That’s lovely, but I have a bit of a smudge right here.” She brought her hand up to a spot at the bottom of her neck, close to her collarbone. “It’s driving me mad. Would you mind cleaning it for me?”

Remus obligingly trailed his mouth down to the spot she had indicated. He sucked on it until she began moaning in desire. Remus chuckled into her skin as he asked, “Any more sports in need of a good spit polishing?”

“Hmm, yes,” she hummed. “Do you know, there is a spot on my inner thigh that is positively filthy!”

Talk like this would lead to nothing good—or rather, it would lead to everything good were they anywhere else—so Remus reluctantly lifted his head and stepped away from her.

“Why’d you stop?” she asked breathlessly.

“We’re on top of a mountain, Nymphadora. This is hardly the time or place to do this right.”

“And why is that?” Tonks asked petulantly. Remus goggled at her and she snorted in amusement. “I meant, why are we on this blasted mountain instead of being locked away in a room somewhere? A Bed and Breakfast with a big feather bed and no connection to the floo network?”

“We’re here because Charlie is here,” Remus began patiently.

“I never thought I would say this, but fuck Charlie.”

Remus grinned, but continued on as if she had never interrupted. “You need to see Charlie face to face when you break your engagement, and you need to break that engagement in order to be with me. It’s all very simple.”

“But it was never a real engagement,” Tonks protested. “I only agreed to be his girlfriend so his parents wouldn’t find out that he was gay. It wasn’t as if we ever planned to actually get married.”

“Even so. Regardless of your intentions, he is still your fiancé and you can’t break your engagement via owl post. It would be… tacky. And, as I said, we can never be open about our relationship until this thing with Charlie is settled.”

“But I like sneaking about with you,” she objected slyly.

Remus agreed with a grin, but remained adamant. “True, there is a certain appeal to sneaking about, but there are also disadvantages.” His voice dropped to a husky drawl and Tonks shivered in response. “Wouldn’t it be nice to live with me in my cottage? You’d wake up every morning in my bed, protected in my arms. I’d make love to you and then we’d shower together. I’d wander into the kitchen to make us breakfast while you broke all the knickknacks in my bathroom in your attempts to get ready for work on time. After you left, I’d repair everything you’d broken the day before, putter about the cottage and have dinner ready before you got home. Then we’d—“

“That’s it!” Tonks threw on her backpack and aggressively began stomping up the mountain again. “Let’s go see Charlie!”

Remus laughed aloud but didn’t say anything. He simply resumed his study of her lovely backside and silently followed in her wake.

It wasn’t quite an hour later when the sun began to set. The sky turned a burnished gold with red tendrils stretching all the way across the horizon. As beautiful as the sky was, however, it couldn’t hold a candle to Tonks. Her auburn reflected the red and the gold and a thousand hues in between. Remus stopped to look at her, gasping as Tonks’s beauty quite literally took his breath away. Feeling subconscious, Remus bent over in an attempt to force his lungs to start working again.

“Wotcher, Remus. Why’d you stop?”

Unwilling to admit that he was such a sap for sunsets, the werewolf temporized. “It’s nearly dark now. I think we should set up camp for the night while we still have enough light to see by.”

“What are you?” Tonks demanded. “An old woman? We’re almost there now. Another two hours, possibly three, and we’ll be at the top. Another hour to find Charlie’s camp and I’m a free woman before midnight. Let’s push on!”

Faced with Tonks’s stubbornness, Remus realized that he actually believed the excuse he’d given her. “Two or three more hours in good light; it’ll take far longer in the dark. And what makes you think we can find Charlie’s camp once we get to the summit in any case? In this light, or rather, lack thereof, the only things we can reasonably hope to accomplish are two broken necks.”

“Nonsense,” Tonks snorted. To prove her point, she began stomping up the mountain, slamming each foot before the other with forceful violence.

Remus was shocked but not surprised when her foot broke through the earth’s crust and remained there despite her desperate attempts to break free. Manfully fighting off the desire to laugh at her, Remus went to help her.

Unfortunately, this was exactly the wrong thing to do. The ground was far thinner than he believed and their combined weight caused the earth to groan alarmingly. Hoping to work quickly before the ground could give way entirely, Remus grabbed her arms and leaned back, putting all his weight into pulling her free.

He succeeded in pulling her foot out of the hole… by widening that hole considerably. Suddenly, all the surrounding earth began crumbling beneath their feet and they were falling.

It was dark within the bowels of the earth so it was impossible to say how far they fell, but it felt like forever to Remus. When he landed, the air split with the sickening sound of a bone breaking. A long moment later, the pain hit Remus like an express train and he realized that the broken bone was his.

“Remus!” Tonks sounded panicked but her voice was clear and unblurred. Remus guessed that she was unhurt and that relieved his primary worry, but his secondary concern—that his leg was broken—appeared more likely by the moment. “Remus!” she called again, and he moaned in response.

Between one heartbeat and another, Tonks was beside him. She hovered over him, blocking out most of the light trickling in from the ceiling. Despite the failing light, Remus could see everything about Tonks, or at least everything that was important. He saw the love in her eyes, the concern that tightened the lines around her mouth, the enormous roundness of her face and globular body…

Wondering whether he had hit his head in addition to his leg (though he couldn’t quite figure out the mechanics of how he might have damaged both body parts at once), Remus shook his head to clear it. No, Tonks was still tremendously fat. Wider than she was tall and closer to a beach ball than anything else.

“Uh…”

“Merlin, Remus! Can’t you speak?” Tonks’s eyes glittered in terror. “Do you know your name? Mine? Do you know what year is it? Where are we right now? Who’s the Minister of Magic? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Yes, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, 1999, a mountain somewhere in Eastern Europe, Arthur Weasley and three.” Tonks sighed in relief with each answer and Remus almost grinned in response. “None of those answers prove that I’m really conscious, however, because I’m still seeing eighteen Tonks, all crammed into one body.”

Tonks gaped at him in confusion then burst into giggles. “No,” she gasped out. “No, you’re not. I simply forgot.” With no further explanation than that, Tonks promptly deflated back to her normal size.

“Now I know I’m delirious,” Remus muttered.

“Not at all,” she assured him. “I shifted myself while we were falling. I figured the more padding I had, the softer the landing would be when we hit bottom. Which turned out to be the case. It’s dead useful being a Metamorphusage sometimes,” she told him seriously.

“I’d imagine so,” Remus acknowledged. “I, however, am not so fortunate. I landed on my right leg rather badly and suspect that it’s broken.”

“Oh, I can fix that straight away,” Tonks said breezily. “Let me just get my wand.”

“Um, Tonks,” Remus began carefully. “Fixing bones can be rather delicate work. Are you certain that--”

“Huh?” she asked, head still buried in her backpack. “Of course I can set a broken bone! Mother insisted I learn, even before I started Hogwarts. I can’t imagine how she got an underage magic exemption for me, but there you go.”

Remus thought about Tonks’s perpetual clumsiness and the number of broken bones she’d probably accumulated over the years, and decided that he too would have insisted that Tonks learn as much medical magic if he’d had the raising of her. His mind then drifted to Andromeda’s aristocratic manners and forceful personality and he grinned to himself. He could quite imagine how that exemption came about.

His thoughts were interrupted, however, by a strangled cry. “Bugger!”

“What is it?”

“My wand. It fell to the bottom of my pack and…” Tonks trailed out, clearly unable to say the words. Remus smiled sympathetically, wishing he could stand up and give her a hug or that she’d come down to his level. “Could I— um— Would you be willing to loan me your wand?”

“Fixing bones is tricky work under the very best of circumstances. Are you certain you can do it with someone else’s wand?”

Tonks nodded firmly and that was enough for Remus. She might be clumsy and adorable, but she was also a highly competent Auror. If she said she could do something, then she could. He dug out his wand and handed it to her without a word.

Remus knew from far too many experiences just how much it hurt to have one’s bones reset. He had barely begun to brace himself against the pain when Tonks let out a loud cry. “Somnos!” Remus blinked in surprise, but before he could try to formulate a thought, he was fast asleep.

~*~*~

Remus didn’t know how long he slept, but his internal clock suggested a few hours at least. He tried to go back to sleep, unwilling to face the mud, decay, and other nasty things he knew they were certain to find in the dark recesses of the earth. But then Remus thought of Tonks braving all those terrors by herself and knew that he couldn’t be that much of a coward.

Reluctantly, Remus forced his eyes open… and let out a small cry of wonder. Their de facto prison cell was beautiful and awash in a thousand points of light. The ceiling was covered in delicate icicles, each glistening with its own flame. There were pencil-thin stalagmite and towering columns growing from the cavern floor, desperately reaching for the stalactites above. Most of the formations were white, but Remus saw patches of red and orange and purple scattered about, giving the room an unearthly glow.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” came a quiet voice. Remus turned towards Tonks and saw her looking at him anxiously. “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” Remus answered, realizing as he said it that it was true. “Better than ever, in fact. You do good work.” She smiled in pleasure and he grinned back. “Not just on my leg, but on this.” He waved his arm around the cavern. “How did you do this?”

“I didn’t do anything,” she told him. “It’s all natural.”

When Tonks said this, Remus looked around and realized that she was right. All the light in the cavern originated from the end of his lonely wand, but which somehow created the illusion of brilliance as it bounced off the cave formations. “I hate to leave here, but I suppose we must. If you’ll hand me back my wand, I can turn our sleeping bags into flying carpets.”

“No,” Tonks declared. “There will be no flying carpets at the moment because we’re not going anywhere until morning.” Tonks sighed. “You were right before. We should have made camp earlier when the sun went down. It’s completely dark now, so we might as well stay here until the sun comes up.”

“As beautiful as this cave is, it’s hardly the most comfortable place to spend the night,” Remus said doubtfully.

“It will be after you transform our sleeping bags into a real bed,” Tonks said practically. “Of course, it’s rather cold down here and there’s no wood for a fire, but I expect we’ll survive.”

“Of course we will,” Remus intoned gravely. “We have each other, and I prefer body heat to a roaring fire in any case.”

“Oh you do, do you?” Tonks asked archly. “Well, you’d best get started on that bed then.”

“Will you give me my wand back?”

“I don’t know,” Tonks mused to herself. “I rather like your wand.”

“How about you give me back my birch one and I’ll give you my other wand in a moment.”

“You’ve got a deal,” Tonks snickered.

Remus laughed to himself as he set about making the bed. Tonks puttered behind him, finding foods in their pack and making a snack for their dinner. He worried about the delicate formations, but she was surprisingly nimble around them and didn’t trip once.

When he finished, he found Tonks sitting cross-legged on the floor. She’d spread her spare shirt out and placed apple slices and crackers and granola bars upon it. It was a simple sight, but the domesticity implied there took Remus’ breath away. Of course, it helped that she looked absolutely perfect in the muted lighting of a thousand cave crystals.

He went over and stroked her hair lightly. “Hello, beautiful.”

“Hello yourself. Sit down and eat. I know it’s not a lot but—“

Without removing his hand from Tonks’ hair, Remus sat down beside her. He inched into her personal space until their thighs were touching. Not content with that contact, Remus dipped his hand lower, lightly brushing the back of her neck. “I’m not hungry.”

“You have to eat, Remus. Healing takes a great deal out of the patient; you’ve got to replenish your energy.”

“Oh, I have plenty of energy, Nymphadora,” he assured her as he began peppering her neck with light kisses.

“You only think you do,” she grumped at him, clearly determined to ignore his seduction attempt. “And don’t call me Nympha-uhhh…”

Remus grinned in triumph at this proof that he had found that one spot guaranteed to drive Tonks wild. Smirking at her, he sat up and clapped his hands. “I guess I am a bit peckish after all. What have we got?”

“Sod dinner,” Tonks growled.

“But I’m wasting away here,” he whined piteously.

Tonks glared at him and crammed a granola bar into his mouth.

As soon as he finished choking, Remus began laughing. Tonks couldn’t maintain her glower in the face of his mirth and joined him. She hit him lightly and he offered her a cracker with a saucy grin.

After that they settled into a dinner that resembled foreplay much more than it did a meal. Neither ate the food that he or she picked up, but only that which was offered by his or her lover. Tonks made Remus groan by sucking his fingers into her mouth with each tidbit. He retaliated by dropping an apple down her shirt and fishing it out with his teeth. When Tonks began offering him crackers with her lips instead of her fingers, however, even the pretense of eating was shattered. Remus took the cracker, dropped it on the ground, and began kissing her.

It was a slow kiss, languid almost, but filled with passion all the same. Their tongues waltzed around each other, slowly coming together then quickly darting apart in a dance as old as time. It was maddening in a way, but Remus had no desire to hurry the pace. He was perfectly content… or so he believed until Tonks began stroking him through the fabric of his trousers.

“I do believe a different location is in order,” he murmured.

“I do believe you are correct, Professor Lupin.”

They stood up together, careful not to let go of each other, and made their way to the bed. They were only a few feet away but stopped twice for kisses, so their progress wasn’t rapid.

When they finally got to the bed, Tonks started to remove her shirt but Remus gently stopped her. “Let me. Please.” Instead of simply taking off her shirt, however, Remus began sucking on a sensitive spot just below her left ear. After a moment he released it and started trailing his tongue down her neck, stopping every few inches to suck at random spots. If Tonks gasped or moaned he would remain there; if not, he would travel on. In this leisurely fashion he slowly worked his way down to the neckline of her shirt. He quickly unbuttoned her shirt with his nimble fingers, but then resumed his frustratingly glacial pace.

“Remus,” Tonks growled. “Are you planning on getting anywhere good anytime soon?”

“This isn’t good for you?” he asked with mock hurt.

“You know it is,” she snarled. “But I need more.”

Remus complied with a laugh. He sat her up so he could remove her bra and then lay her back down again. When she was back upon the bed, he unbuttoned her jeans and pushed them down below her hips. He then brought his mouth to her right breast while he used his hands to knead the other one. He had her groaning almost immediately, but Remus continued his merciless attack. He suckled and nipped and massaged her breasts until she was nearly incoherent with want. At that point he dug his hands under her underwear, began kneading her deliciously tight buttocks, and then resumed his unhurried expedition southward.

Remus licked and nipped his way down Tonks’ torso, stopping only to explore her belly button. He dipped his tongue within that small cavity again and again, an explicit promise of what he would do to her aching cunt in the near future. He might have stayed there forever if she hadn’t let out an incoherent whine that he took as a plea to move on. Remus laughed against her skin and she shuddered at the sensation.

Taking pity on her, Remus continued moving down Tonks’ body. His tongue left a wet trail from her belly button down to the hemline of her bikini panties. “Hmm,” he mused. “These will have to go.”

“I don’t care what you do with them,” Tonks whined. “Rip them off, if you like. Just… do it quick. Please…”

Remus clucked in disapproval. “Now, now, Nymphadora. No reason to rush things. Or to ruin a perfectly good garment either, for that matter. Lift your hips like a good girl.”

Tonks obliged, too caught up in the moment to even let out her customary protest against the use of her given name. Remus efficiently removed the last of her clothes and then positioned himself between her legs.

With one finger he traced all along the edges of her thatch, careful to never touch her vagina. “Do you know your hair down here clashes with the hair on your head?”

“What are you on about?” she asked in disbelief.

“Your pubic hair is orange, while the hair on top of your head is magenta. It’s a dreadful color combination. One I’d hoped to never see again, to be perfectly honest. That’s one good thing about the disco age,” he mused. “It put a stop to—“

“Remus!” she shrieked. “Can we discuss aesthetics later?”

“Of course, Nymphadora,” he agreed with a laugh.

“Don’t call me— Ohh…“

Tonks’s objection to “Nymphadora” was forgotten the moment Remus dipped his tongue into her wet folds. He explored the ruby cavern of her vagina with the same slow attention that he had previously given to her mouth and then her body. She was soon thrashing and moaning beneath him, clearly riding the edge of a powerful orgasm. He brought his thumb to her clit and began flicking it in time with his thrusting tongue. Tonks came almost immediately under this dual assault.

When the vaginal walls finally stopped fluttering against his tongue, Remus slid up Tonks’ body and claimed her mouth in a demanding kiss. No longer teasing, he kissed her hard as he frenetically ran his hands up and down her body. In return, Tonks rubbed and stroked his rigid cock as it nudged against her entrance. The change in pace soon had Tonks moaning once more, so he brought his hand back to her vagina. She was wet again and ready for him, and the gods knew he was ready for her. Of course, he’d been hard since dinner.

“Now,” Tonks whispered. “I want you inside me. Now.”

That soft voice was enough to take away all his desperation, leaving Remus with nothing but a feeling of rightness. He gentled his kiss and then sank into her waiting depths with a soft moan of pleasure. Once inside, he paused for a moment to give her a chance to adjust to him, and then began rocking slowly.

Remus wanted to maintain the slow pace for as long as he could, but Tonks soon made that impossible through the simple expedient of rolling them over. Once she was on top, she angled her body to take him in as deeply as possible and Remus began losing the fine edge of his control. He thrust up as she undulated against him, and Remus decided that nothing in his life had ever felt this good. Sooner than he would have liked, he was screaming her name (Tonks. In the height of passion, it was always Tonks) and they were both coming hard enough to see stars.

Tonks sighed and collapsed on top of him. Too tired to even smile, Remus had just enough energy to skim his fingers up and down her spine. Each time he brushed against a certain spot in the small of her back she would shudder and arch her back. When her over-sensitized flesh stopped reacting to his touch, he cupped his hands at the base of her skull and brought her down for a sweet kiss. “I do love you, Nymphadora Tonks.”

“And I love you,” she said softly. “Believe me, I would have kicked your arse long ago for calling me Nymphadora if I didn’t.”

“I believe you,” he chuckled. “I do indeed.” With that, he kissed her one last time and then closed his eyes. Tonks let out an endearing sigh and then snuggled into his arm.

Remus’ last thought before he drifted off to sleep was that his life was perfect. Down in a hole, recovering from a broken leg, minimal amounts of food, and his life was perfect. He was alone with the woman he loved and there was nothing else he wanted from life.

~*~*~

“Hello down there…”

Remus flipped over to his stomach and pulled the pillow over his head. He wondered if the universe would grant him another few minutes of sleep if he wished hard enough.

“Tonks? Lupin?” Apparently not. “Are you down there? Can you hear me?”

“We’re fine, Charlie,” Tonks yelled at the ceiling. “We were just waiting for morning to work our way out of here.”

“Ah, but luckily for you, I’m… Oi! Lupin! What are you doing with my girl?”

Remus pulled the pillow off and sat up. Morning light spilled into the cavern, making the cave seem far less magical than it had the night before. Leaning over the hole that they had fallen from was Charlie, his red hair gleaming in the sun.

“I’m, uh—“

“He just finished ravishing me, darling,” Tonks piped up.

“Huh. So are you ready to come up now or not?”

“You’re not upset?” Remus asked nervously.

“What do you think?” Charlie asked with a grin. “My fiancée, heartless woman that she is, has succumbed to the charms of a scruffy werewolf. Why, that might be enough to put me off women forever! It will be years before my parents have the heart to set me up with another girl. Am I upset? I could kiss you both!”

“You’ll kiss Remus over my dead body,” Tonks informed him. “I won’t risk you stealing him.”

“Oh, but darling, of course he’s safe from me. No man could possibly resist your charms.” Charlie quirked his head in thought. “Except me, of course,” he added.

“Shove off,” Tonks urged. “I think I want Remus to ravish me again.”

“Don’t you want me to bring you two up?” he asked.

Remus and Tonks looked at each other. A silent conversation passed, each asking the other if they were willing to give up this pocket away from the world. Tonks shook her head gravely, and Remus smiled. “I think we’re all right for now, Charlie,” Remus called up. “We would appreciate it if you’d send down some food, however.”

“Right ho,” Charlie said agreeably. “I’ll also send Mad Eye an owl, to let him know that you’re okay. He was worried, you know.”

“Very thoughtful of him,” Remus said.

“Thanks, Charlie,” Tonks added sincerely.

“Oh, thank you,” he said lightly. “If a broken heart won’t win over Vasily, I don’t know what will. See you in a few days.” And with that, he was gone.

“Vasily?”

“Don’t ask,” Tonks advised him. “I don’t want to think about Charlie’s love life. I’d rather concentrate on my own.”

“Sounds good to me,” Remus agreed. “Now where were we?”

“You were going to loan me your wand again.”

“So I was.”

And so he did.

THE END