The werewolf's eyes were shadowed, the muscles of his arms hard where they pressed against Sirius' chest.

A complicated feeling flared within Sirius, like a hot itch moving through his entire body, out to his extremities and giving him the urge to fight back, but one of his arms was broken and the other was caught between them. He could not move. He could only stare up into the eyes of the werewolf.

Even as an acting auror, Sirius had never felt this intimidated by a stranger. His work out on the field had always been in larger groups if there was any kind of threat. On patrol with Moody or Kirke, he had never had an altercation like this, never been pressed up so closely to his assailant.

Sirius could barely breathe, and it took all his will power to get out the words, 'I'm not afraid of you.'

The werewolf's chin was angled downwards, his face mere millimetres away from Sirius'. There was something devilish in his golden eyes; unearthly, and most hellishly clever. They captured Sirius' attention like the bright eyes of a snake.

Sirius felt the low rumble of Remus' words in his chest as he spoke.

'For all you know I may do this all the time. I may have lured hundreds of men like you away from civilisation, so I could do…' Remus paused and relaxed his stance slightly, looking off to the side. 'Do what? What do you people think werewolves do? Eat you or something, even when we look like this?' He threw his head back and laughed.

Sirius shook his own head, staring at him whilst trying to stop his gaze lingering on the werewolf's teeth. 'You're completely deranged,' he breathed.

The muscles flexed in Remus' jaw. He grabbed Sirius' lapels tighter and pushed the collar of his leather jacket up beneath his jaw.

'Maybe I am,' Remus said lowly, 'so listen to a bit of advice from me. From now on, do every single thing that I tell you to do, and do it quick, or you'll feel either a quick bite to the neck or a swift killing curse to the back, do you hear?'

The werewolf's hot breath on Sirius' face only seemed to emphasise his threat. Sirius shuddered. Finally, it seemed to sink in. This werewolf had the power to kill him or ruin his life, turn him into a creature like him. He was not sure which was worse.

When Sirius did not reply, Remus continued. 'I might have to stun you if you keep making such a fuss,' he said, both quiet and firm in his tone, 'but carrying around the unconscious body of a man would make me a lot more conspicuous than I would like to be, so I think it's better for both of us if we stay calm and you keep your mouth shut.'

'You're vile,' Sirius could only whisper, his breath catching at strands of the werewolf's hair. 'You're a psychopathic beast.'

Remus smiled wryly at him. 'Is that the best you can do? Believe me, I've been called far worse than that.' He paused, cocking his head to the side as he considered. 'And as it turns out, maybe that's just the kind of man I am.'

'You're not a man,' Sirius bit out. 'You're a dirty werewolf.'

Remus' expression paused, like his face was yet to catch up with the rest of him. Sirius was convinced in that moment he had pushed it too far, but then the werewolf only nodded. 'Yes, I suppose I am.'

Then, as casual as anything, he stepped away from Sirius and started walking again, wrenching Sirius along behind him.

Sirius did not kick up a fuss this time. His mind was reeling as he took it all in. He tried to right his clothes as they walked, but he felt shaky, like his fingers belonged to someone else.

Sirius could feel himself slipping away, but he could not afford to lose himself in that moment. It was vital that he should have his wits about him.

After half a minute, Sirius pulled his broken arm up to his stomach and clutched it with his shackled hand. The werewolf let him do it, his own arm hitched up towards Sirius at an odd angle.

Sirius began tapping the fingers of his left hand against his right, willing his brain to come back into focus.

The werewolf started whistling again, and that only increased the dreamlike sensation Sirius was experiencing.

After several more minutes of walking they came to a gate. Remus unhooked the piece of string keeping it shut with his free hand, then stood back to let Sirius walk through.

Coming onto the road, the warmly lit Hodgson Hotel came fully into view. Passing by a low stone wall that lined the perimeter of the establishment, their boots crunched across the gravel driveway.

Craning his neck to look through one of the windows as they neared, Sirius spotted a fire burning in the grate, and saw a merrily decorated lounge room, with Yule lights and a Yule tree.

The werewolf came to a stop just outside the circle of lamplight that illuminated the hotel entrance. He stood staring at the old wooden door for a long moment.

'What?' Sirius asked finally, watching the werewolf out of the corner of his eye, who was being far too still for Sirius' liking.

'Have you got any money?' Remus finally asked without looking at Sirius. 'Those Death Eaters took all of mine.'

Sirius shook his head.

'Splendid,' Remus said, glancing at him. 'We'll have to do a sleep and run. Always my favourite kind.'

Sirius did not really care about how they were going to pay. He was more concerned about what the werewolf planned on doing once they entered.

'You're not going to…?' Sirius started.

Remus focussed his attention on Sirius, who flinched and looked away, and immediately hated himself for it.

'Not going to what?'

'You can't hurt them,' Sirius said resolutely, catching the werewolf's gaze this time and using all his will power to hold it.

Remus' mouth fell open, and then he frowned incredulously. 'Why would I want to hurt them?'

Sirius only looked back at him, equally as incredulous.

'They have nothing to fear from me,' Remus said. He turned away and shuffled from one foot to the other. 'You on the other hand…'

Sirius scoffed lightly, hoping he sounded braver than he felt. 'Well, come on then. If I'm going to be killed, I would rather it be in there than out here in the cold.'

Sirius walked forwards into the pool of light, but the werewolf stood his ground.

'What is it?' Sirius asked.

'Perhaps it's better to stay out here after all,' Remus said, gesturing back at the dark fields behind him.

Sirius frowned. 'Just a minute ago you were…' He stopped and sighed, shaking his head. 'We can't stay out in the hills all night, even with your little warming spells.'

'Alright, alright,' Remus said, shaking himself slightly, before he muttered under his breath, 'let's do this.' Then, in a more domineering voice he said. 'You'll play your part well if you know what's good for you.'

Sirius tried to ignore him and started to move forwards again, but he was only pulled back once again.

'Hang on a minute.' The werewolf gestured with his head, and Sirius reluctantly followed him back into the shadows at the edge of the driveway.

Remus stuck his hand into his inside coat pocket and pulled out his wand. Before Sirius could blink, he had cast a few quick cleaning spells on both their clothes and faces, which seemed to get rid of most of the mud and blood but did not make either of them any less damp.

'Now, what's the matter with your arm?' the werewolf asked, peering down at it where Sirius had it clutched to his stomach. 'Is it broken?'

'Clearly,' Sirius said sardonically. 'You broke it when you pushed me out of that moving caruh.'

'Car,' Remus corrected as he raised his wand.

'What're you doing?' Sirius asked at once.

Remus paused, raising an eyebrow at him. 'I'm going to fix it for you.'

Sirius took a step backwards as far as he could. 'You are not.'

Remus took a long breath in, followed by a long breath out. 'I'm actually very good at mending broken bones. Please let me fix it.'

Please go and jump off a cliff, Sirius wanted to say, but he only shook his head.

'We can't exactly hop off to St Mungo's,' Remus pointed out. 'Either I fix it now or it's going to heal bent out of shape.'

Sirius paused. It really was hurting. 'You're sure you can do it?'

'Yes,' Remus said, raising his chin. 'I have broken more bones than I can count, and I'm still walking around. Come here.'

Gingerly, Sirius held out his arm. Remus tapped his wand and muttered Episkey, and with a horribly audible crunch Sirius' bone snapped back into place. Remus muttered another spell, and a wave of cool washed over the limb.

'That should help with the swelling,' Remus muttered.

Sirius pointedly did not thank the creature. He instead busied himself with shaking out his arm and examining the bruised flesh.

Remus shoved his wand away again into his inside coat pocket, his mind clearly back on the task at hand as he pulled them both towards the hotel. He looked a lot less menacing when illuminated by the warm light, and now that Sirius had the use of his arm once again, he felt more self-assured, but he still found himself simply nodding his assent.

'You'll back me up, you hear?' Remus said, who, in contrast, sounded a lot less sure of himself compared to when he had been threatening Sirius with murder. 'I'm afraid you'll have to take my hand again.'

Sirius looked down at their two hands in confusion.

'How else do we explain the handcuffs without the muggles calling for the police?' Remus asked pointedly. 'I think it's best if we hold hands and then we put both our hands into my pocket.'

Sirius huffed a laugh before he could help himself. 'This is a rural muggle village, and you want to play us off as a couple?'

There was a slight smirk on Remus' face as he watched Sirius. 'Well, what else do you suggest?'

'I don't know,' Sirius said, glancing over at the hotel, 'but I've heard horrible things about muggles and queers. They'll beat us to death and bury us in the garden.'

Remus blinked, then let out a genuine laugh. 'We're not walking into a working men's pub or anything. The muggles here are much more likely to opt for restrained disapproval as opposed to physical assault, especially if they're older. The worst that will happen is they chuck us out into the cold again.'

'I don't like it,' Sirius said, shaking his head, 'and I don't want to hold hands with you.'

Remus took a step forward, looking down his nose at Sirius and letting his smirk broaden. 'You wouldn't have complained back on the train.'

Sirius shivered again and jumped away from the werewolf, but Remus' smirk and tone of voice made something else stir in Sirius' belly, and he immediately hated himself for it. 'Well, that was before.'

'Before you found out I was a "dirty werewolf", you mean?' Remus asked, tilting his head whilst he continued to smirk infernally. 'Nothing else has changed.'

'Nothing else, except for the fact I now know you to be a murderer.'

Remus' eyes flicked between Sirius'. Finally his smirk fell, and he turned away. 'Come on.' He opened up the palm of his cuffed hand for Sirius to take.

'Hang on,' Sirius cut in. He had looked down at their joined hands, only to see a drop of blood fall out of the werewolf's right sleeve. 'You're fucking bleeding now?' he cried, drawing up his hand involuntarily and making the werewolf wince even more.

'Stop pulling on it,' Remus hissed.

'You're a werewolf,' Sirius spat at him. 'Isn't that some kind of biohazard? You can keep your dirty, infected blood away from me.'

Remus shook his head. 'For Merlin's sake, you can't become a werewolf from touching my blood.' The werewolf held out his hand. 'Now, give me your hand and pretend to be my gay lover.'

Sirius was seething. Doing all he could not to vomit, he slipped his hand into Remus'. The werewolf grasped it firmly, slipped their entwined hands into his coat pocket, and then marched them up to the muggle hotel.

A bell on the door rang as they entered, and the warm air hit Remus like a wave. Immediately, some of the tension in his shoulders dissipated. The space was infused with the rich smells of pine needles, orange, and clove, and the crackle of fire coming from the fireplace made Remus let out a breath he had not known he had been holding.

They walked across the foyer inelegantly, forced as they were to stand so closely together. Remus could feel how rigid Sirius' body was beside him. The auror was scanning the room quickly, as if he thought he might appropriate the heaviest looking object he could find and bash Remus across the head with it.

Remus despised having to scare Sirius like he had out on the road, but it was not the worst thing he had ever done to save his own life. He was quite willing to play the role that society painted him out to be if it meant they both came out of the situation alive and kicking.

Even before Remus' threats, the auror had decided that Remus was worse than the dirt beneath his shoe. Remus could see the disdain in his eyes, but Remus refused to act the victim, and he was certainly not going to waste his time trying to change Sirius' opinion.

The hotel, although clean and in top condition, was old fashioned in its style. Only the electric clock that was coming up to 10pm, and a grey plastic phone hanging on the wall reminded Remus that he was still living in the twentieth century.

As Remus looked around the hotel, at the faded carpets and bare stonework, a kind-faced woman came out of a door at the back of the room and came forwards to stand behind the counter. She had a bob of thick, dark brown hair that blended in with the mahogany fixtures.

'Well, would you look at the state of you both,' she exclaimed in a thick Cumbrian accent, shaking her head with a rueful smile.

Remus had thought he had done a rather good job of cleaning Sirius and himself up, but he realised he must have been mistaken. His split lip was still stinging, and he had no idea what kind of bruising or scrapes he had acquired from both the fall from the car and his beating from Sirius.

Remus noticed the way the woman's eyes lingered on their conjoined hands, as well as over the scars on his own face, but he smiled warmly at her as they approached the counter, and she quickly threw on a winning smile to match.

'Sorry, I know it's very late,' Remus said, resting his left hand on the counter, with Sirius pulled up closely to his right side, 'but do you happen to have any rooms available?'

The woman's smile faltered. She looked between them with a frown, her eyes lingering on Remus' split lip. 'You're both very young.'

'Relatively young, I suppose,' Remus said with fake joviality, slightly bemused at the woman's statement, 'but we're older than we look.'

Sirius was glaring at him from behind his curtain of damp hair. Remus tapped him on the shin with his foot.

'The thing is,' Remus said, leaning forwards. 'We've found ourselves completely stranded. The car broke down a few miles away. I bashed my face against the steering wheel, would you believe!'

Remus felt a flicker of relief when the woman's wary expression softened.

'We've had to leave all our luggage behind and walk here on foot,' Remus continued.

The woman nodded. 'You poor dears. That sounds like a nightmare.' She gave them a once over, as if searching for any more injuries.

'I'm Mark, by the way,' Remus said promptly. 'Mark McCreevy.' The lie came easily to him. It was one of several aliases that he had ready to go in the back of his mind.

She smiled at him hesitantly. 'Nice to meet you, young man. My name is Elaine.' She looked over at Sirius expectantly.

Sirius was tapping his fingers against the counter, eyes staring off into space. Remus nudged him with his elbow. Sirius started, then glanced at Elaine and jumped when he caught her watching him.

'Your name, dear?' Elaine prompted.

'Me?' Sirius faltered, looking to Remus with wide eyes. Remus wanted to elbow him again. He was sure that trainee aurors did several weeks of stealth training, after all.

'Oh, I'm Ta… ony, Tony. Tony… erm…'

'Richardson,' Remus cut in. 'Mark McCreevy and Tony Richardson.'

Elaine nodded slowly, looking a little bemused. 'Very pleased to meet you.'

'You too,' Remus said as warmly as he could.

'So you… want to stay?' She looked again at how closely they were standing.

'If we can. We're exhausted,' Remus said.

Elaine pulled a large ledger across to her from the corner of the counterand began flicking through it to find the right page. She stopped, her eyes running down a list, and then an air of awkwardness came over her. 'Oh, um.' She paused, glancing up at Remus but not quite able to reach his eyes. 'I'm sorry, but we've only got one double bedroom available.'

Remus cleared his throat, scratching at his chin just for something to do with his free hand. 'Ah, well, you see…' He could feel Sirius' eyes on him, and he faltered. 'Perhaps that… won't be a problem?'

Elaine had already seemed to suspect as much, but her eyebrows still shot up towards her hairline as she looked between them.

'What I mean to say,' Remus continued quickly, 'is I'll be sleeping on the floor, of course, but we really would like to take the room.' He paused, then decided to really hammer the message home. 'We'll be wandering the hills in the cold all night otherwise.'

Elaine looked between them with a worried expression. 'I'm not sure my husband will take too kindly to it.' She glanced over her shoulder at the door she had just come through, then turned back and lowered her voice. 'But I suppose, what he doesn't know won't hurt him.'

Remus felt his smile melt into one that was a little more genuine. 'Thank you.' He turned to Sirius. 'Elaine is really too kind, isn't she, Tony?'

Sirius glared at Remus. 'It's not too late for her to grab a shovel,' he muttered.

Elaine frowned and turned her ear towards Sirius, as if listening harder could make her understand what he had just said.

Remus wanted to scream at the man, but he forcibly maintained his composure. 'What was that?' he asked, trying to keep the strain out of his voice.

Sirius flashed Remus a look, but then turned to Elaine. 'Really, you're too kind,' he said in the poshest, most drawling voice Remus had ever heard.

'Well, I wasn't about to turn a couple of young lads like you out into the cold,' she said, seeming happier now that they had moved past such an apparently awkward conversation.

Turning away from them, she popped her head through the door at the back, giving instructions to someone in the next room.

Sirius leant towards Remus at once, his expression menacing. 'You're using some kind of weird, hypnotic, werewolf magic on her.'

The werewolf vitriol was really starting to grate on Remus now. Irritated, he shot Sirius a contemptuous look. 'Or I'm just being polite.'

Sirius opened his mouth to say something, but then Elaine came back over.

She looked them over once again. 'But you're both soaked through. You had better get changed. If I put your clothes in the dryer for you tonight, they'll be as good as new tomorrow.'

Remus had thought he was quite well versed in muggle activities. He had no idea what a dryer was, and Sirius looked just as perplexed, but it was easy enough to guess what the woman meant.

'Ah, but we left our luggage behind.' Remus gestured back at the door they had come through.

'Oh, yes, of course. I'll see if I have some spare pyjamas you can borrow for tonight, shall I?'

Sirius had gone back to glaring at Remus murderously from beneath his curtain of hair.

Remus looked him right in the eye as he replied to Elaine, 'That would be marvellous, thank you.'

'Will you be needing anything to eat?' she asked.

'Perhaps just a couple of glasses of whisky, and some sandwiches wouldn't hurt.'

'And what address is it, please?' she asked, and Remus reeled off the address of a flat in London he had lived in a few years prior.

The landlady asked for a signature, and Remus nudged Sirius in the side. 'You had better do that.'

Remus flinched when he felt Sirius' hand move in his pocket, brushing against the charred skin of his wrist. For a moment he felt Sirius' nails dig sharply into the palm of his hand.

But he did it, taking the pen with his right hand and signing the made-up signature of Tony Richardson.

Elaine gestured for them to follow, and they walked up the stairs behind her.

'I'll come back soon with your dry clothes and your supper,' she informed them, as she showed them into their room. 'There's an ensuite at the back there, with fresh towels on the handrail.'

Remus was pleased to see that someone had already lit the fire. There were even little chocolates on the pillows.

'Don't worry about the washing, or the drying,' he added quickly. 'We'll hang our things up in front of the fire and they'll be fine.'

Elaine looked disapproving. 'Well, if you're sure.'

Remus nodded. 'We can fetch some new things tomorrow. Thank you so much.'

Elaine nodded and left, closing the door behind her.

As soon as they were alone, Sirius snatched his hand out of Remus' pocket and pulled away from him.

Remus winced again at the pain. 'Will you stop doing that?' he said in a harsh whisper, not wanting to bother anyone in the neighbouring rooms.

'I can't take any more of this,' Sirius said vehemently, tossing his black hair over his shoulder. He looked back at the door. 'I'm going to tell these muggles everything.'