Closer. Hard R. Remus/Ginny. Post-war.
You can have my isolation
You can have the hate that it brings
You can have my absence of faith
You can have my everything

"What was it you wanted, Ginny?" he asked tiredly, rubbing the back of his neck.

Ginny's hand gripped the doorframe to Remus' bedroom and she suddenly felt quite small. She watched his hand knead the taut muscles at the nape of his neck and became momentarily entranced by the lines and arches of his throat. That is, until he coughed rather pointedly. She bit her lip. "I know it's late, Professor, but I…"

"What was it you wanted?"

His tone was firm. Slightly irritable. A pang of guilt struck Ginny, but the thought that she may have disturbed his rest was easily chased away by the books and papers spread out across Remus' bed. Professor Lupin never slept much anymore. "Well… you see, um… Professor…"

She was shaking. Remus softened his expression slightly upon noting how nervous she was. "Remus. I'm not a professor anymore. And you're not a student anymore, anyhow."

"Not much of anything anymore, I don't think… Remus," she murmured, wrapping her arms around herself.

He didn't speak for a few moments, closing his eyes. "It's three already. Come out of the hallway."

She stepped inside hesitantly. Remus reached around her to close the door, sealing them off from the rest of Grimmauld Place. He sighed. "Sit. There's a chair under those clothes, or else… you can push those books aside. I suppose you want to… talk?"

She perched herself on the edge of the bed. Brown eyes met his amber ones with a confused sort of sadness. A brief moment allowed Remus to note that the hollow, bitter lines of loneliness had started etching themselves where laugh lines should have been. "There's no one to talk about… is there?"

"It's been a long day," he offered weakly, sitting on the edge of a desk, piled high with papers.

"Mass memorials are rarely short," she retorted. She swallowed hard before continuing. "It's just us now, Remus. You know that, right?"

It was his turn to meet her with confusion. "What are you on about? There are plenty of people still here, Gin. Bill and Fleur. Fred and Angelina. George and Oliver. Harry and Luna…"

"They've all got each other!" she exclaimed in exasperation. "They're all bloody paired off and perfect. They're all matched up so that they can hold hands and shag like bunnies and everything else goes away. And here we are." She bit down on her lip as her voice cracked.

"Here we are," he conceded. He watched with mild curiosity as she wove strands of her now-waist length red hair in and out of her fingers. She hadn't cut it since her fifth year, he remembered, because she'd found out the Dark Lord's mistress had hair that fell to her knees. He stood again and paced about for a moment. "Things have never just 'gone away,' for me, anyhow. It's something you get used to with time. There will inevitably be days every spring where everyone else can smile and I can't breathe."

"I don't smile in springtime either, you know."

Her voice was so childlike that he hardly recognized it as the voice of a normally mature nineteen year old girl. He stopped in his tracks and met her eyes again. She smiled with considerable bitterness. "Tom," she said, succinctly.

"I know." Remus nodded in understanding and looked away from her again. "Sirius."

"I know." There was a long silence before Remus spoke again, listlessly.

"What was it you wanted?"

"Something you've got." Ginny swallowed hard again. "I don't want to smile, Remus. I don't want to be like them. I just needed… And I thought maybe…"

"You wanted to fuck, then." He said it as though it were a fact from a textbook, half-expecting her to blush and leave. He found himself pleasantly surprised when she did not, instead meeting his eyes with a firm "yes".

She rose as if to kiss him, but his hands found her shoulders and pushed her down to the bed so that she lay across the width of the king size bed he and Sirius had once shared on top of a layer of open books. He straddled her hips nimbly, leaning down to press his mouth roughly to hers, his large hands holding her shoulders to the bed. She felt him pressing against her through his pajama bottoms and her oversized boxer shorts and let out a small whimper into the bruising kiss. He pulled back slowly and moved so she could feel his breath at her ear. "Like this? Was this what you wanted, Ginevra?"

She meant to answer and explain herself properly, but his lips at her neck brought her concentrations elsewhere and she busied herself with tangling her fingers in his longish hair and attempting to get her pale legs up around his narrow waist. Pages rustled beneath her and she winced as a particularly well-bound book dug into her back. He chuckled against her skin at her squirming and moved to the side of her, breaking their contact from the hips down. One of his hands allowed her to roll onto her side a moment so that he could sweep the books onto the floor. The other moved from her shoulder to slip under the waistband of her bedtime apparel. She wriggled away from the caresses he'd attempted to bestow upon her. "Just come inside me," she pleaded softly. "I just…"

Before she could finish, his finger slipped into her, closely followed by another. "So tight…" he remarked, smirking slightly at her groan.

"Just FUCK me, Remus." Her teeth clenched and her eyes met his with a need unlike any sexual desire Remus had seen. And suddenly he understood.

Their remaining clothes were disposed of quickly. His smirk faded. He touched her face once gently, kissing her cheek before entering her. "You're sure?"

Her hips arched up with a small cry. "Do it. Please…" She gasped as he began pounding into her with slow, deliberate movements. "I need this."

His pace quickened as he felt her begin to contract around him and his lips found her neck again. He closed his eyes tightly, feeling the wolf take over as he came hard, his teeth breaking the skin of her neck, and a single cry of rapture escaping Ginny's lips.

Remus rolled off of her and adjusted their positions so that she lay with her back to him, curled up together. He licked the wound gingerly. When he had cleaned it to his satisfaction, he buried his face in her hair. "This was what you wanted?"

"Mmm…" she affirmed, finding his hand. A hollow smile crept across her face, unseen by her drowsy bedmate. She clung to his hand with a hungry desperation, despite the exhaustion and aches settling over her. "I'm just like you now." She kissed his knuckles. "Nothing else means anything."

And then they slept.