#remadora

The fire's glow dances across alabaster skin, reddish blotches blighting where the stinging hex struck, disappearing and reappearing under her sports bra. Lithe muscles shifting as she rolls strong shoulders, tapering down to a slender waist. A pretty constellation of moles. Dimpled indents to either side of her spine, just above the low rise waistband of her jeans, about the size of his fingertip.

He averts his eyes. Eventually. Hands shaking on the jar's lid, feeling every inch a loathsome pervert.

"Cheers. Not my best work in that last round, leaving my back exposed. Reckon Mad-Eye wanted to string me up," she says, oblivious to his torment.

"Well, Sirius is an excellent duellist. He always was. You got him with that knee reversal."

A lowball from her, but it seems unkind to agree with her self-deprecation. He dips his fingers in the jar, taking a moment to warm the paste in his hand before it touches her skin.

And to summon up the nerve.

"Nah, no excuse, I was crap," she says affably, eyeing him over her shoulder. "Not the only one. Molly destroyed you, eh?"

He nods. "Yes, she was on top form."

Tonks scoffs at that.

"Ha! Piss off. Molly's more alright than she thinks, but you're better. If you'd tried you'd have won that."

Tempting to deny it, but the accusation strikes him remarkably like a confession. Molly had needed the confidence boost about as much as Sirius had needed his mood lifted.

He eyes her speculatively — her face. Much safer.

"Auror Tonks, I suspect I might say the same to you."

Her vulpine smile, a vice around his skittering heart. Not safer after all.

"Not unprompted, or you would've. Don't tell him. You ever gonna put that on my back or just play about with it?"

He summons an unimpressed look to skewer her with, then obediently shuffles his chair closer anyway.

Taking a fortifying breath, he reaches up to skim his fingertips across the uppermost welt on her right shoulder.

Tonks sighs, her shoulders dropping and relaxing. When it's clear she won't recoil, he starts to rub the bruise paste in small, widening circles. Her skin is unfathomably soft and supple.

"Let me know if I hurt you," he says, and it comes out in a gravelly whisper. He winces at the sound, clearing his throat.

"Mmm? No, that feels great," she breathes, leaning back into his touch. "Make sure you get under the band of my bra, I'm sore there."

Somehow, his free hand finds its way to cupping her left shoulder as he works, scooping a more generous helping of the paste up before allowing his fingers to slip underneath the tight band. This time his whole hand makes contact with her skin. Sternly, he reminds himself not to enjoy it too much or linger longer than necessary. A challenging undertaking.

The back of her neck exposed under curling, copper wisps of her sweet smelling hair.

A sudden, mad urge to lean in and press his lips behind her ear. Appalling. He wrestles the impulse down.

Lecher. Disgusting. Taking advantage of her trusting nature.

"That's sooo good. D'you know, I bet you'd give amazing massages," she purrs as his thumb rubs idly along her lower back.

He titters awkwardly, face uncomfortably warm. "Oh. Err, can't say I ever have."

"That's a shame. You've got dead nice hands."

With no idea what to do with a statement like that or what an appropriate response might be, he continues with the task at hand.

He's leisurably treating the last of her nascent bruises when the kitchen door swings opens. Sirius lofts a brow at the scene in front of him, meeting his eye for a second knowingly.

"Well, well. I'd wondered where the two of you skulked off to."

Remus startles back at once, shame-burned. A cringing record-scratch screech of chair legs across stone floor.

"Excellent. Looks better already. Tea, anyone?" he asks, strained.

Mugs come wordlessly flying from each of them. A flick of his wand to pop the kettle on; hunching forward over the table, gazes unmet all around.

Sirius hobbles his way into the room and hurls himself into a seat, knees evidently stiff from their earlier reversal. Tonks stretches langorously, lets out a decadent groan he can feel in his pulse, then shrugs her jumper back over her head.

"Wotcher arsehole," she yawns. "We're duelling again next time, that was pathetic of me."

Sirius's lip curls upwards, eyes saccading between them. "The duel?"