Disclaimer: Remus and Tonks aren't mine. Much as I'd like them to be.
A/N: Written for the Metamorfic Moon Love Hearts Valentine's Day challenge, where I got the prompt 'Only You'. This fic won Best Angst. You have been warned ;).
They've been in bed for a while, talking about their days.
He loves moments like this with her, when it's just them, and he can try to believe they're just two normal people in love, not soldiers on the front line of a war he's not sure they can win.
She does most of the talking – she always has more to say than he does – but he doesn't mind, because he loves to hear stories about her adventures in the world, whether it's a tale about capturing someone practising Dark magic, or her embarrassing herself in front of an important visitor by catching her foot on the leg of her desk and firing paperclips everywhere.
And she talks with so much life, so much enthusiasm and colour, that he thinks he could listen to her all night.
They talk about other things, too: them, what they're doing together, how they feel; the past, the present, and the future, sometimes. She's the first person he's really talked to about a lot of things in a very long time – but she's easy to confide in, and he thinks she understands him far better than a lot of people would give her credit for.
When she says that all she wants is him – which she says quite often, in different ways – he never knows whether to believe her.
Part of him thinks it'd be nice – more than nice – to take her words at face value. It's immensely flattering to think that the rest of him is enough to make up for his obvious short-comings – but the other part of him thinks that he shouldn't believe her because it's a very dangerous idea to buy into.
How can he be enough, when she gives him so much, and takes so little?
He asks her what she wants for Valentine's Day, because it's approaching and he's had it on his mind, and when they're curled up together in bed with her head on his shoulder and her arm across his stomach, it seems like the best time.
It isn't that he hasn't done Valentine's Day before – he has – but never with a girl like Tonks, and he can't imagine her going giddy over teddy bears with stuffed silk hearts pinned to their chests or generic over-priced flowers.
"Only you," she says melodramatically, and grins, rustling the sheets as she shifts to kiss him on the jaw. He turns towards her, resting his chin on her forehead, unable to resist a slight smile.
"Setting your sights a bit low, aren't you?" he says, and feels her frown in question. "Well," he says, teasingly, "you should start by saying you want to go to a fancy restaurant and order the most expensive thing on the menu, and then to the opera, where I've laid on fireworks spelling out the words 'I Love You' that go off during the big finish – and then we barter down."
"Oh," she says, with mock-realisation. "Is that how it works?"
He nods with artificial authority, and then laughs.
"In that case," she says, "I'd like a candle-lit dinner in the park and a private concert by the Weird Sisters, please."
"Oh well I don't think that's a good idea," he says. "You'll hardly be interested in me with all those young, nubile musicians running around."
She laughs and pokes him admonishingly on the chest.
A moment passes, and then she shifts and props herself up on her elbow, looking down at him with a coy half-smile. "Just being with you's enough for me," she says, and her smile broadens into something easier, more relaxed. "I don't care what we do – I don't care if we do nothing and just sit around here listening to the WWN, or if we have baked beans on toast for dinner, or if we go to that crappy pub on the corner and play darts."
He smiles, because he knows she means well, but he really does want to do something special for her, to show her what she means to him. He'll have to surprise her, he thinks.
"What about you?" she says. "What do you want for Valentine's Day?"
He frowns in consideration for a moment, and then starts when he realises he hasn't given that a second thought, because it really hadn't occurred to him she'd get him anything or do anything out of the ordinary. He shakes his head, but there seems only one answer he can give. "Just you," he says, and although he fails to pull off melodrama entirely, he doesn't mind, because he means it. What else could he possibly want when she's already given him more than he ever dreamed of having?
He reaches for her and draws her closer, and she smiles. "Card might be nice," he adds, chuckling quietly to himself against her lips as he weaves his fingers into her hair.
And as she kisses him and sets his soul on fire, he thinks that he never wants to stop trying to be enough.
It's why he leaves her, in the end, even though it breaks his heart to do it.
She says that they can make it work, that she loves him and she knows he loves her, and that some mission, even if it is with feral werewolves, doesn't change that.
But, achingly tempting as her offer is, he can't accept it, however much he longs to, because he knows that she deserves more.
She deserves someone who doesn't need to try to be enough.
A/N: Reviewers get Remuses of their own to act out the words on a Love Heart of their choosing ;).