Author's Notes: I wrote this for MrsTater's birthday. It's an outtake from Like a Charm -- a post hospital reunion fic I wrote a little under a year ago, which I shall post here in due course. Pre-reading isn't necessary. Many thanks to Bratanimus for helping me keep this a secret until MrsTater's big day by stepping in to beta it for me.

By the Bean

In the kitchen at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, Tonks sat at the table with her chin resting on the heel of her hand. She was tired -- exhausted, really, and just a little upset.

She hadn't seen Remus in just over a week, and she missed him more than she really wanted to admit, and, annoyingly, it was apparently obvious to all and sundry in this dratted house exactly what it was that had been causing her uncharacteristic melancholy for the last few days. While she could deal with Molly's sympathetic if wistful words of hearty support, and even Mad-Eye's resounding reminders that constant vigilance did not wait for a lovesick heart, she'd had more than enough of Sirius' ribald teasing.

So much so that when his appraising eyes had swept over her face the instant she'd entered the kitchen this evening and his eyes had lit up in mockery, a fresh jibe clearly on the tip of his tongue, Tonks had snapped, and Sirius, his face fallen and stormy, had risen from his chair, and marched out of the room.

Tonks still felt a twinge of guilt at the hurt she'd seen shadowed in the back of his eyes; she would have apologised instantly, had Sirius's parting shot not been a muttered expression of hope that Remus would soon return to 'shag the misery right out of his bird.'

Truth be told, she was just a little ashamed of herself; it wasn't in her nature to take a joke outside of the context it was meant, and she knew Sirius was only playing, and was, in fact, quite happy for both of them. But Sirius didn't know the words that had tumbled from Remus' lips as he'd kissed her goodbye one last time, Apparating before Tonks had had a moment to catch her breath from where it had caught in her chest.

For a week she'd thought of nothing but how she ached for him to come home so she could whisper those words back, how desperate she felt for Remus because she was certain he'd chosen his moment to give her the opportunity to leave his sentiments unreturned, and she wanted him to know, to remove the touch of doubt he must surely feel.

But still, she felt guilty for taking it out on Sirius.

Well, there was nothing she could do about it tonight. Sirius would not be tempted down from Buckbeak's room now, and, Tonks reasoned, her efforts would be better concentrated on feeding herself and getting an early night -- in Remus' bed, tucked in by the comfortingly familiar scent of his that lingered even in his absence, and trying to dispel a little of the upset that had descended upon her more thickly as the week had progressed.

The question of what to eat was a tricky one. Molly hadn't been round in a few days and Tonks knew Sirius had polished off the last of what they called decent cooking the previous night.

Wearily pushing back in her chair, Tonks sighed, then stood with exaggerated effort and dragged her feet towards the pantry. The muscles in her shoulders were crying out for the relief of Remus' fingers; her tired mind craved the relaxed state that could only be achieved by lying in bed with his arms wrapped around her and her head on his shoulder -- particularly after one of his glorious massages.

The shelves in the pantry were almost bare; half a loaf of bread sat on the middle shelf flanked by an unopened jar of raspberry jam. Tonks smiled in spite of herself; the jar had been there for months, since the Order's very first shopping list, a special request from Dumbledore, who'd charmed it to stand as sentry to the freshest loaf of bread in the house.

Apart from that, nothing more than a bag of flour and sugar graced the lower shelves, and, of course, Remus' precious stock of Muggle baked beans.

And there was only one tin left.

She hesitated slightly at the memory of Remus' severe tone reprimanding Sirius for daring to pinch a tin some months ago; but then she laughed at herself, thinking that Remus was hardly going to take her to task for borrowing a tin rather than go to bed hungry, and in any case, she'd time to replace them before he returned. He'd never know.

She snatched it up and headed back into the kitchen, sliding the door closed behind her. Of course, this decision presented her with an altogether different problem: through all of the countless mealtimes she'd sat in the kitchen while Remus cooked his beans, she'd never actually paid any attention to how he did it.

She stopped when she reached the stove and examined the turquoise label on the tin, with its white lettering on a black shield.

Beanz Meanz Heinz.

The first time she'd seen such a tin, she'd wondered at this funny Muggle spelling. Remus had shrugged his shoulders and said he thought Muggles sometimes changed spellings around to make them look better in fancy letters. She'd teased him, asking if the professor had an urge to pull out his red quill and correct it with a flourish.

In a heartbeat, he'd responded, telling her he didn't begrudge the Muggles their little spelling games when they could produce such a delectable meal for less than fifty Muggle pence.

The cooking instructions were a little confusing. Muggle food, she knew (especially quick Muggle food like beans), was often cooked in a box called a microwave; and surely a microwave wasn't necessary if Remus cooked beans, but the word was in large print, which surely made it important.

Perhaps Remus knew a spell -- something that would replicate the effects.

Well, first things first, she thought. Open the tin and then see what's what.

Scrutinising the label, reading every word, she wondered at the Muggle way of thinking that they'd print all those numbers: carbohydrate, 12.9, fat, 0.2 -- did they chop up every bean to see what was in them? They even told you where you should put the tin before eating it (and in what temperature!), but not a direction to be had about getting the blasted beans out.

Alohomora might work.

She peered closely at the top of the tin; there seemed to be no discernable opening point so she turned it upside down. It looked exactly the same.

Alohomora was a risky business when you were dealing with something sloppy like beans if you couldn't tell where the opening might appear.

"Revealo!" she whispered, waving her wand over the increasingly frustrating tin that Remus seemed to handle with ease on a daily basis when he was home. Still no opening appeared.

Glancing once again at the instructions, she set down the tin and put her wand to one of the hobs; at least heating the range was one task she could manage amongst these baffling Muggle cooking practices.

After several seconds, a great band of light reflected about the room as the hob took flame. It was ironic, Tonks thought, that her attempt to light a flame to cook for herself Remus' meal of choice should cast the only real brightness she'd seen since he'd left. Now he was such a staple presence in her life that a room seemed grey without him, sadly empty in his absence.

She plucked a small saucepan from the rack that hung from the ceiling; it was heavier than it looked and fell with a metallic clang to the range as her wrist buckled under the unexpected weight.

"Bugger," she muttered under her breath, which caught somewhere high in her chest when all at once, it seemed, soft footsteps behind her gave way to hands resting on her hips, a touch as unmistakable as the familiar scent that wrapped around her and the arms that now snaked around her middle.

Remus.

"Are you alright?" Softly spoken words breathed in her ear. Ridiculously, she felt as though she could cry; it was just a tin of beans, and just a silly argument with Sirius, but she had missed him so, so much, and spent so many nights desperate for him to return so he could know exactly what he meant to her.

Her grip loosened on the handle of the saucepan and she turned slowly in the circle of his arms. "You're here," she said, somewhat unnecessarily, but the answer to his question was there in her words, and as she tilted her head up to look into his eyes, she knew without question that he was just as relieved, just as pleased and happy to see her.

He bent his head and kissed her, simply, but softly, lingeringly, pulling her closer to him with hands on her back.

"Looks like I got here just in time," Remus said, leaning back and peering at her with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

Questions about his early arrival were pushed aside as she rose to his gentle teasing. "Just in time to stop me cooking stolen baked beans?" she replied, then felt compelled to add, "Not that I could get the damned thing open to actually do any cooking. Tell me: is it strange Muggle containers or Remus Lupin anti-theft charms that are foiling me here?"

"Come on," he said, "I'm starving, and I assume you are too, given all this urgency to get inside a tin can." He flashed her a grin. "What I did arrive home in time for was preventing a baked bean cooking travesty. You go and grab some butter, the salt and some white pepper, and I'll show you how to do this properly."

Remus moved his hands to her arms, and turned her to face the pantry, pulling her back slightly to whisper, "It's so good to see you." Then he gently nudged her away from him, leaving her with the echo of a delicious shiver where his breath had tickled just below her ear.

By the time Tonks returned, clutching the items Remus had asked for in her arms, the tin of beans sat beside the stove, the gaping mouth of its opening mocking her.

"How did you…?" she asked Remus, who was watching her with a slightly smug smile. "Is it a charm?"

"No, it's just a simple Muggle contraption, but don't you worry about that. What's important is what we do with them once they're out of the tin," he replied, plucking the salt and pepper from her arms and placing them on the work surface.

"But I read the instructions. I might have been confused about the bit with the microwave, but I definitely didn't see anything about butter and pepper," Tonks said.

"We're not going to use the Muggle instructions; we're going to make my special beans, and for that the butter and the pepper are key ingredients."

"Okay," Tonks said, setting the butter beside the salt and pepper. "What do I need to do?"

Remus held out a knife to her. "Now I've seen you handle a knife quite admirably at dinner, so no excuses for non-participation in this cookery lesson, you hear?" He gave her a playful wink, which made her giggle slightly as she flashed him a smile of mock bravery.

"Cut a couple of inches off the end of the butter, and pop it in here." Tonks nodded as Remus plucked the pan from the stove and wiggled it, then held it steadily beside the butter.

"Step one, complete," he said, with an affirmative nod, once Tonks had let the slice of butter fall from her knife into the pan, which Remus placed above the burning hob.

"Now what?" she asked, watching butter melt into a pool of thick yellow liquid.

"Now we add the beans." And he did, tapping the base of the tin until every last bean had lost its slimy grip on the side of the can. "A little bit of pepper." The pepper pot rose up and shook itself over the saucepan, and small particles of white dust rained down and settled over the beans. "And now we stir."

She felt Remus' hand settle on her hip and allowed him to pull her closer until their bodies were pressed together. Out of nowhere, a wooden spoon appeared in the saucepan. Tonks took it and a few moments later Remus' warm hand curled around hers.

She didn't know how Remus managed to make the simplest of tasks so romantic, but he seemed to have a knack for it. His hand guided hers to stir slowly around the edge of the pan. But for the gentle hiss of the flame burning in its ring on the stove, and Remus' slow breathing in her ear, the room was still and silent and Tonks felt herself relax completely, leaning back against Remus until he was fully supporting her. She sighed deeply in contentment as his cheek slid against hers when he lowered his chin to her shoulder; he ran his hand just under her t-shirt, fingers splayed on her stomach, holding her firmly against him, making her breathing quicken ever-so-slightly at the sensation of his skin touching hers.

"You looked a little tense earlier," he said in a low voice. "Did you have a bad day?"

Tonks let out a slow breath. "Had a bit of an argument with Sirius. Well," she corrected, "an argument would probably require him to do something more than storm out the room." She winced. "I snapped at him -- I shouldn't have."

"I suspect he fully deserved it. What did he do?" Remus' voice held no note of reproof.

Wondering if he would find her explanation slightly pathetic, Tonks gave a strangled laugh. "I haven't exactly been a barrel of laughs this week, and unfortunately, Sirius put two and two together and actually made four…"

"Meaning?"

"I missed you," she said simply. "A lot."

"And so you've been his entertainment for the week?"

"He seemed to find it highly amusing to think up new ways to tell me I'm just a little bit pathetic, which of course, I probably was, but still, it wasn't funny after a while."

"I'm sorry," Remus said, tightening his arm around her. "If it makes you feel any better, I'm quite certain that should you ever have to go away for a few days I shall more than likely be quite pathetic myself, and spend my days pacing about the place in the manner of a tragically lovesick fellow, and provide Sirius with twice the amount of fodder for ridicule."

"That bad, eh?"

Remus hummed softly. "Well I did miss you too, this week, to quite a large extent."

Tonks started to reply, but a large bubble of bean sauce popped dramatically in the centre of the pan, sending orange droplets flying to the sides. "Oops," Remus said, lifting his chin from her shoulder to peer into the pan, his hand directing hers to stir a little faster. "See how distracting you can be that I start to neglect a pot of baked beans?"

"I didn't do anything!" Tonks said indignantly with a laugh.

"You're standing in front of me, aren't you?"

Tonks leant back and turned her head, reaching up for a kiss. In a matter of seconds, he was kissing her back, properly; his lips parted and she tasted him, the soft warmth of his tongue glided tantalisingly over hers. Both their hands stilled over the now steadily simmering pot on the stove, and Tonks wasted no time in turning round and wrapping both her arms around Remus' neck, pressing herself up against him.

So far, he hadn't seemed awkward about the manner of their parting and she was determined that he wouldn't get the chance to -- though since she'd been counting on a few more days to decide precisely how she would tell him, she was short of the slightest clue of how she might, but she tried to tell him with her kiss, show him she wanted more of him -- all of him…

But just when she was beginning to think that it didn't matter how or when she told him, just that she did, Remus pulled away, his breath heavy on her lips.

"Distracting me again?" he murmured. "Come on, let's get this finished. I've spent the last few days plotting to show you how much I've missed you…"

The sparkle of intense desire in his eyes sent shockwaves through Tonks' body -- she took a deep breath against the butterflies that caught in her chest.

"…And we'll both need our energy for that." His voice had lowered into an almost husky tone that always shocked her, somehow -- that he could be so affected by her; and she knew, without question, that what she could read in his eyes and discern in his voice at moments like these was the absolute truth, and it still amazed her that a man like Remus could feel and think things like that about a girl like her.

"Better get to it, then," she replied, shaking herself. "What can I do?"

Remus patted her once where his hand rested low on her back and said, "Go and grab a few slices of bread and we'll toast them."

Reluctantly, Tonks disengaged herself from his embrace and headed once again to the pantry. A slightly naughty yet altogether enticing answer to her quandary presented itself as she walked across the kitchen.

One hand braced to slide the pantry door open, she looked over her shoulder at Remus, who was peering into the saucepan with a critical eye.

"Remus?" she said.

"Hm?" He looked up.

"I love you."

For several seconds she watched the expression on his face turn from distraction, to shocked silence, to a dawning realisation of what she'd said and all that it meant, and then she turned and ducked into the pantry to fetch the loaf of bread.

The End