Hair of the Dog

Hair of the Dog

"Here, wake up. You still alive?"

Remus groaned. It seemed he was still alive, but he didn't particularly feel as though he ought to be, or even that he wanted to be. His eyes felt as though they'd been paved over with cement, and his mouth tasted like he'd been snacking on moldy gym socks.

With exceptional effort, he pried his eyes open enough to glare at whomever it was who had come to wake the dead. The room he was in was ablaze with sunlight and he winced at it painfully; a dull throbbing had snuck into his brain on the cloak tails of his consciousness and was slowly working its way up from the base of his skull towards his temples. He turned his head away from the offending glare and his cheek rasped against the rough fabric of the old couch he was sleeping on. It smelled of feet. Maybe that's why he felt like he'd been eating socks.

"So you are alive. More's the pity for you, I guess. You want some coffee? Or a little hair of the dog?"

Remus managed to squint his eyes open just enough to make out a figure receding into the next room, silhouetted black against the blinding sun.

"Hair of the what?" he croaked at last, certain he hadn't heard right. He looked around. He was in a room of sorts, actually, more a sort of walled-in porch with a few odd pieces of mismatched furniture including an offensively avocado green recliner, two cane chairs with most of their seats broken through, and the large, rough, grey brown tweedy couch on which he was sprawled under a red and yellow plaid flannel blanket. He stared uncomprehendingly at a lone bare foot where it stuck out from under the blanked and was propped up on the arm of the couch. He wiggled his toes experimentally and was rather more surprised than he probably ought to have been to realize that the foot was his own.

He was beginning to think he was hung over, but he wasn't quite sure how that was possible.

He cast his mind back in search of answers but drew a complete and total blank. Even when he changed he usually had some sort of recollections; the sense of passing time, a collection of disjointed images, memories of pain. But he had nothing to connect this morning to. Absolutely nothing. It was at once terribly liberating, and intensely frightening.

"Here."

He looked up, and managed to focus his eyes on the figure standing before him. He was a young man, maybe a few years Remus' junior, with straight blonde hair that stuck out like a halo all around his head and bright blue eyes. His hair reminded Remus of a dandelion. He was wearing a plain white undershirt and jeans and holding out a steaming mug. Remus found enough concentration to move his arms and accepted the mug. He took a swig of the hot liquid within and nearly choked on the strong black coffee. He had been expecting tea. But coffee was probably just as well, if he really was hung over.

How on earth had he got drunk enough to get hung over?

"Bless you," he managed, his voice still sounding more like the gears of an ancient automobile grinding than an actual voice. The Dandelion Boy laughed and moved over to the seriously repulsive recliner with his own mug of coffee. The sound of his laugh was like a cow bell, short, bold, and strangely melodious. He was barefoot.

Remus forced his protesting body into more of a sitting position and took another swig of the coffee. It was foul stuff, and strong enough to take the enamel off of his teeth, he suspected. He drank it anyway.

"Hair of the what?" he repeated, his voice beginning to sound slightly more like an actual voice and less like a piece of rusty farm equipment.

"The dog," the Dandelion Boy replied. "That bit you."

Remus frowned at him over the top of the steaming coffee mug. His mind was reeling, and the first thing he thought was, he knows. He physically shook that thought from his head. "I was bitten by a dog?" he managed.

The Dandelion Boy laughed again, in his short pleasant laugh.

"It's a euphemism," he explained. "The idea is that you have a little bit of whatever you had a lot of to get you over it. And damn, did you have a lot. A lot."

It would take a damned lot, Remus thought, passing a hand over his eyes, more than he'd ever had money or inclination to buy. More even than his friends had ever had the inclination to buy. He had an image of a bottle. A dirty bottle with something disgusting floating at the bottom.

"A lot of what?" he asked.

"Tequila at first. And then when Old Johnny ran out of that you switched to gin."

"That explains the socks."

The Dandelion Boy stood up suddenly and headed back towards the other room. "Toilet's through here," he said simply. Remus stared at the doorway for a moment before he poked his head around it again and grinned. "I bet you need to take a piss something awful."

As soon as he said it, it was true. It was all Remus could do to disentangle himself from the flannel blanket and get to his feet. He wobbled for a moment, feeling the warm, coarse boards of the floor under his bare feet, and then took off through the doorway as fast as his spinning head would let him move. It wasn't until he came back out of the bathroom a few minutes later that he gave any thought to the fact that he wasn't wearing anything but his boxers. He stumped back over to the couch and wrapped the flannel blanket around himself and tried to process the disparate information his brain was receiving.

It didn't work.

Instead, he stared at the hideous green recliner. Good god it was ugly.

Dandelion Boy reappeared with a bundle of clothes which he handed to Remus. It was a pair of jeans and a plain, clean, white work shirt. Remus blinked at them.

"These aren't mine," he said at last.

"Quick aren't you?" Dandelion Boy said. "They're mine. We're about the same size, I figure."

Remus frowned at the clothes. "Where are my clothes?" he asked, not entirely sure he wanted to know the answer. Dandelion Boy laughed.

"Don't worry," he said. "You made it home trousers intact. I just figured that couch was uncomfortable enough without your jeans poking you all night too. And then -- well, no offence, but those clothes were rank, and that shirt was only being held together by a few threads and a prayer." He shrugged expressively. "So I tossed 'em." He turned and walked towards the other room again.

"You can have a shower too if you like," he said, gesturing to the bathroom again as he passed. "You smell a lot better without the clothes, but you're still no bouquet of roses."

Remus hadn't had a proper shower in about two weeks, so he gratefully gathered up the clothes, the flannel blanket wrapped possessively around himself, and headed for the bathroom.

When he emerged ten minutes later dressed in his new clothes and having scrubbed most of the layers of grime from his person, the scent of food caught his nostrils and his stomach growled noisily. Was one supposed to be hungry when one was hung over? Those college kids he'd bunked with in Austin had always been talking about having the munchies, and they had been hung over a lot of the time, but he rather thought the munchies were induced by something other than alcohol.

He followed his nose into the adjoining room, which turned out to be a kitchen. Or really, more like half of a kitchen, it was so small, but it was painted a cheery yellow color. A rickety orange dinette set took up most of the room. Remus sunk into one of the chairs which wobbled dangerously on the uneven yellow and orange patterned linoleum. Dandelion Boy had his back to him, and was dishing food onto two plates. He turned and set the plates down onto the table. They were completely covered in eggs and bacon and toast. But the eggs were green.

Still feeling rather bewildered, Remus accepted his plate with a muttered thanks and stared at the eggs. No. The eggs themselves weren't green. They were covered in some sort of green sauce.

The sauce he remembered.

Remus groaned.

It wasn't a town. It was just few ramshackle buildings that rose up uneasily out of the brown New Mexico landscape a few miles east of the I-25 highway on the road to Truth or Consequences. It consisted of two gas stations, a hardware store, a hamburger stand called "Dairy Queen" and a dilapidated looking bar called The Owl. It was the name that drew him to it.

He had been traveling down south, moving from one odd job to the next, whatever he could find to do, wherever he could find someone who would give him a few dollars for a few days work. The last place had been some nameless border town where he could see the Rio Grande winding sluggishly like a brown snake through the desert. He'd found it odd to look out across it and think that the other side was an entirely different country; it all looked the same from where he stood. He had dispatched a family of Chupacabras for a dairy rancher there in exchange for a week's lodging and twenty-five dollars. The man had thought they were coyotes.

Really odd looking coyotes.

It was almost laughable the lengths to which Muggles -- Drabs in the American vernacular -- would go to convince themselves that that which they didn't understand didn't exist.

After the Chupacabras he'd hitched a ride north towards Santa Fe. He'd heard it was a sort of Mecca for wizards in the southwest because it was the center of a land where the Old Magic ran deep. The town was convenient for other reasons as well; it was small enough that wizards could live out in the hills, only venturing into town when they needed to; big enough that they wouldn't particularly be noticed when they did go into town; and eccentric enough that the occasional person wearing a cloak or a pointed hat or buying unusual herbs wasn't likely to draw the least bit of attention. He hoped to reach it before the next full moon, which was in four days time. As dangerous as it was to change in the vicinity of people who would recognize him for what he was, it was more dangerous to waken after the change and discover he needed medical help when there was none to be found. It wouldn't do to be taken to a Muggle hospital; with Healers, at least they knew what they were dealing with, and there was such a thing as doctor patient confidentiality.

The Owl was the very definition of seedy. Gritty floors, blacked out windows, a few grimy booths, and a string of bar stools in front of a bar polished almost black with the accumulated grease of time and drink and smoke. But Remus was hungry, and somehow the cheery red and white facade and florescent lights of the "Dairy Queen" had repulsed him. A juke box was crooning a country tune in the corner, an older couple sat in a booth near the door, and the far end of the bar was occupied by a group of men in dusty jeans and plaid work shirts.

Remus took a seat at the opposite end of the bar, dropped his army surplus rucksack at his feet, and did his best not to look shifty. It was a hard thing to do when he was caked in sweat and fine New Mexico dust from going too long without a bath and when his clothes looked like they'd been nicked off the back of a scarecrow. The bartender was large and bald with skin like leather and a nose like a crabapple, lined with purplish veins and pock marks.

"What'll it be?" he asked gruffly, giving the bar in front of Remus a cursory swipe with a filthy bar rag.

"Is that hamburgers I smell?" Remus asked hopefully. The barman looked up, surprised, no doubt, by his accent -- most everyone was in these little towns -- but he nodded curtly.

"Yup."

"I'll have one of those." The man shuffled off towards the kitchen, flicking his towel at an errant fly on the way. The men at the opposite end of the bar had ceased their low conversation in order to stare at him uninterrupted. Remus ignored them. He was used to it by now. As soon as he opened his mouth he was marked as an outsider, especially in these little nowhere towns. When he'd first reached the States, he'd tried, for a while, to shed his posh inflections the same way he'd shed his shabby robes, his identity, his past. The results were laughable, and he'd quickly given up on trying to blend in quite that much.

Remus reached into the pocket of his jeans and fingered the neatly folded bills he had stashed there. He'd almost gotten used to carrying the odd monochrome paper money as opposed to the heavy silver, gold, and bronze coins he was used to. At least dollar bills were lighter.

Not that he would have had enough in Galleons to weigh him down.

There was enough in the pocket for a hamburger, he mused, and possibly a bus ticket for later. Or maybe a hotel room for after the full moon. If the hotel was very cheap. Didn't really matter to him what else it was, so long as it had a bed.

The door to the place opened and Remus was momentarily blinded by the late afternoon sunlight that filled the dark interior. Three young men entered the bar. Two of them took seats in between Remus and the other group, carefully leaving an empty stool between themselves and the stranger, while the other drifted off towards the juke box in the corner. The bartender appeared and didn't even ask them what they wanted before he set about drawing three mugs of beer. He set them down on the bar, sloshing the beer over the sides a bit. Then he pulled out three shot glasses and set them on the bar along with a dusty bottle of some kind of clear liquor before disappearing again into the back room.

The two young men at the bar both wore jeans, western style shirts with pearlized snaps on the breast pockets, and cowboy boots; one was tall and one was short, but other than that, they could have been twins. They had dark hair and skin, and the older and taller of the two wore a huge shiny belt buckle. Probably a rodeo prize, Remus mused. He'd seen a rodeo in El Paso and had been both impressed and horrified by it in turns.

The third young man returned from the juke box and took his place furthest away from Remus. He was white and had on a white cowboy hat. He caught Remus' eye as he passed and bobbed his head in that peculiar way men out here had of greeting one another, a sort of reverse nod. Remus bobbed back.

He felt, not for the first time, a bit surreal in these surroundings. If John Wayne had happened to be the next person to walk through the door, he wouldn't have been the least bit surprised. He felt like he'd somehow stepped out of the real world and into one of the Saturday matinee spaghetti westerns his mother had taken him to see as a child at the Muggle cinema.

The country song on the juke box ended and a rock and roll song came on, breaking the illusion.

"Some people call me a space cowboy!" the white boy crooned. "Some call me the gangster of love!" His buddies laughed and told him to shut up.

The bartender returned a few moments later with a very unassuming burger on a very small plate. No chips, no crisps, no pickle. Just beef on a bun. He set the plate down unceremoniously in front of Remus.

"Anything else?" he demanded gruffly.

"Could I have a glass of water?" Remus asked. The man glared and grunted as though Remus had just asked to see the wine list, but he disappeared towards the back room again. Remus wasn't sure if that meant he was getting the water or that his request had been denied.

He studied the burger. There was something green oozing out from under the bun. It looked like maybe some kind of green tomato relish. He discovered that he was hungry enough that he didn't care.

But he should have.

As he took a large, ravenous bite of the sandwich, he mused that the relish didn't taste like tomatoes at all. It was cool against the warm meat and bread, and had a strangely acidic flavor, a bit like a pepper. He licked his lips as he chewed. And then, inexplicably, his mouth caught on fire.

Actually not, but he wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if it had. The burning sensation built gradually but steadily causing beads of sweat to break out across his furrowed brow and his eyes to tear up until he was physically in pain. He swallowed reflexively and wondered if the bartender had poisoned him. Choking and blinking back tears, he glanced down at the burger and realized that what he'd taken for relish was actually chopped green peppers of some sort. He wheezed and realized that he could no longer feel his lips.

He needed liquid. He needed something to put out the fire that was slowly consuming him from the inside. He stared around wildly for the bartender but the man was nowhere in sight. Remus was desperate. He lunged for the nearest beer and downed it in three large gulps.

It was foul stuff. Watered down. Tasted like horse piss. In fact, he'd never actually tasted horse piss, but he reasoned that that was what it would taste like. Didn't even vaguely resemble what he knew beer to taste like. But it didn't matter. The cold carbonation slowly cooled the fire until he could breathe again and the pain was no longer stabbing, but merely a mild slow ache. He still couldn't feel his lips.

"What the hell's the matter with you, esse?" the Shortest of the three demanded, standing up off of his barstool. Remus held up his hand in surrender as he tried to catch his breath.

"Sorry!" he gasped. He pointed at the burger. "Hot!" he explained, eloquently.

The man just stared at him.

"'Course it's hot. What didju expect? A cold burger?"

Remus shook his head, still gulping the cool air that was helping to dull the burning sensation a little further. "No," he managed, "I mean, it's spicy."

"Old Johnny makes the best damned chile burgers in the state," the Rodeo Winner said, as if that explained everything.

"Sorry," Remus repeated. "I'll buy you another beer."

"Damn right you will!" Shorty exclaimed, but he sat back down on his stool.

Old Johnny appeared rather belatedly with a glass of milky colored water without any ice. Remus accepted it gratefully and downed half of it in a single gulp. He looked up and the white boy was smirking at him.

"'Cause I'm a picker, I'm a winner, I'm a lover, and I'm a sinner... " he sang softly along with the song on the juke box.

Old Johnny took the empty beer mug without comment and shoved it down under the counter.

"I'm buying his next round," Remus offered. Old Johnny stared at him blankly as if that information couldn't have interested him less.

Instead of ordering another beer, however, Shorty grabbed one of the shot glasses and splashed some of the clear liquor into it. He glanced up at Remus and then tossed the shot back like a pro. He grimaced slightly, let out a satisfied little grunt, and then grinned at Remus. He held up the bottle, which was about three quarters of the way full, and shook it at him. Something was floating in it.

"This is my next round," he said. He turned to Rodeo and the Space Cowboy and laughed. Rodeo laughed with him, but the Space Cowboy just rolled his eyes and took a swig of his beer, still singing quietly along with the music.

"I'm a joker, I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight toker. Sure don't wanna hurt no one..."

Remus' stomach began to sink. The liquor didn't look like high class stuff, but even a bottle of the local moonshine was going to require a few more of the dollars in his pocket than he'd been planning to spend. So much for the bed, he thought gloomily.

He shrugged and turned back to his burger. He was a little hesitant to take another bite, but he was also starving. The beer had filled him up a little, but it wouldn't last long, and his money was already spent. Hesitantly, he lifted the burger to his mouth and took another, much smaller bite. He reasoned that he was already so numb that the addition of a bit more fire wouldn't really make any difference.

"You put that beer away pretty good," Shorty said. Remus shrugged without looking up. He heard the clunk of shot glasses and the bottle on the bar, and then suddenly, one of the shots slid his way.

"Ain't you gonna eat anything?" Dandelion Boy asked as he shoveled eggs into his own mouth.

Remus poked at his eggs with the fork he'd been given and decided that it would be rude not to at least try them. Cautiously, he lifted a fork full of eggs and chile to his mouth. He tasted the now familiar acidic bite of the chile along with the salty eggs, but this chile wasn't nearly as spicy as the stuff he'd had the night before -- either that or he was getting used to it. He was utterly shocked to discover that the odd combination of eggs and chile was actually quite good. He took another bite.

"Thanks for... for everything," he said after a while. Dandelion Boy shrugged without looking up. He was eating at a record speed, already more than half done with the mountain of food that had been on his plate. He paused long enough to take a drink of his coffee and smirked at Remus.

"Feeling better?" he asked.

Remus nodded. His head had cleared considerably, thanks to the coffee and the hot shower. The food was helping too. He was actually a little disappointed that his hangover seemed to be passing so quickly. He supposed he could blame that on the wolf's metabolism, but it seemed only fitting that if he'd done enough drinking to actually warrant a hangover, he should at least have the opportunity to experience it properly. James and the others had always made such a big deal out of it, moaning and groaning and clutching their heads as though they were at death's door.

"I'm surprised you're even conscious," Dandelion Boy commented. "You drank enough to kill a horse."

Remus shrugged uncomfortably, hoping that he wouldn't have to try to answer any awkward questions. Luckily, Dandelion Boy let him finish his breakfast in silence.

When they had both cleaned their plates, Dandelion Boy took them and dumped them into the tiny sink. He shoved his hands into his pockets and padded, still barefoot, back into the sun porch room. Remus followed. The boy went over to the end of the couch and picked up Remus' rucksack and held it out to him.

"I went through it," he said unashamedly. "I was looking to see if you had a change of clothes in there."

Remus accepted the bag, his mind working quickly, trying to remember exactly what was in the bag. It wasn't good.

He didn't have a change of clothes, that much was true. He did, however, have a map of New Mexico that he had charmed to show exactly where he was and where he was going at any given time, a set of thin silver chains that he expanded and used when he couldn't find a safe place to lock himself up for the change, an empty plastic canteen, a couple of books and letters, and his wand.

Bollocks.

He glanced up at the Dandelion Boy, his mind desperately grasping for some sort of excuse or explanation, but his benefactor didn't seem to be paying him much attention. He padded across the narrow room to the god-awful recliner and sat in it, feet spread wide apart, hands on his knees.

"Need any blanks filled in?" he asked genially.

Remus sank down onto the couch, his rucksack still clutched in his hands and thought for a moment. "I remember the bar," he said slowly, "and the burger."

"Best damn chile burgers in the state," Dandelion Boy offered. "And the worst tequila money can buy."

Remus stared at the shot for a moment before glancing up at the men. Shorty grinned and shook the bottle of liquor at him again.

"It's on you," he said. Remus considered. It didn't look very good, or very hygienic, truth be told, but there were very few things that could actually kill him, and he doubted very much that some weird American alcohol would be one of those things. Besides, he had already offended Shorty by stealing his beer, and the last thing he needed was to be involved in another bar brawl. And if he was paying for it anyway...

He bobbed his head at Shorty, who was still grinning like a maniac, and drank the shot. It tasted filthy. He realized a little belatedly that he probably should have grimaced and grunted the way Shorty had, for appearances sake.

The three men were staring at him. "Damn..." Rodeo said, obviously impressed. Remus shrugged and went back to his burger. He realized that the chile had a sort of cumulative effect, and that the more he ate, the more it burned. The alcohol wasn't helping either. He took a swig of his suddenly precious water.

He heard the sloosh of the alcohol in the bottle again and the clunk of the bottle against the bar. He glanced up in time to see Shorty down his second shot before pouring out another and sliding the remaining glass down to Remus.

"Drink it," he said, his grin gone.

"No thanks," Remus said, in what he hoped was a polite but firm tone.

"Tell you what," Shorty persisted, "you outlast me and I'll pay for the hooch, yeah?"

"Carlos..." the Space Cowboy protested in a weary voice, but Carlos ignored him.

"Yeah, gringo?" Carlos said. "You in?"

Remus considered. His friends had learned early on that playing drinking games with a werewolf got you nowhere; they'd quickly ascertained that his metabolism was so fast that the toxins were in and out of his system before they could have any effect. He'd discovered more recently in attempting to -- what was the cliché? drown his sorrows? -- that if he drank an excessive amount in as short a time as possible, he could manage to get buzzed, but that was all. And the buzz was hardly worth the effort.

Still, if a few shots meant the difference between a bed to sleep off the full moon in and a dusty arroyo, it might be worth it. The dollar bills in his pocket felt lighter than ever.

He picked up the shot and drank it.

Twelve shots later, he was beginning to feel a little warm and light headed.

The first and only other time he'd managed to get buzzed had been a little over two years ago on Halloween. He'd been in New York City a little over a month, and he knew a place in Alphabet City where an ancient little witch named Mai Ling sold Firewhiskey right along side the Jack Daniels and sake and Absolute. He'd had fifty dollars that his father had sent him as a birthday present, and he'd spent it all.

He'd managed to get himself to the warm, lightheaded phase before he quit. Rather than blurring and darkening the memories he was so desperately trying to repress, the Firewhiskey only seemed to be making them razor sharp, so that they cut all the more. He had given his remaining two bottles, one full and one half-full, to a homeless man sitting on a stoop.

Carlos was slumped over the bar, his chin resting on his forearms. He was still conscious, but only just, and he was staring blearily at the shot in front of him.

"You done, Carlos?" one of the workers from the end of the bar asked. They had slowly inched their way closer over the course of the rounds so that they were now avid spectators. Remus suspected he'd seen money changing hands, but he found he didn't really have the concentration to care.

"I said, you done?"

Carlos didn't answer. Rodeo prodded him and he fell off of his stool. The little audience cheered and laughed appreciatively. Money changed hands again.

Remus was feeling pretty good. He would have his bed after all, it seemed. He smiled benevolently down at Carlos who was groaning on the floor.

"Who's next?" he asked cheerfully.

Rodeo stood up very slowly from where he'd been stooping over his brother and climbed up onto Carlos' stool. He was a lot bigger than Carlos was, taller, broader of shoulder, and more muscular. His enormous belt buckle glinted in the dim light of the bar. He was also almost completely sober, having only managed to drink three quarters of his beer since the drinking game had begun. He held out his hand and Old Johnny handed him a clean shot glass.

Remus smiled.

He grabbed the bottle and tipped the dregs of it into his shot glass. Along with the liquor, something small and brown and squiggly that had been sloshing around in the bottle all this time fell into the glass. Remus stared at it.

"There is," he said in a very serious voice, "a bug in my hooch."

Dandelion Boy laughed his melodious laugh. "You sure as hell can put it away. I'd ask if you have a hollow leg, but I already checked." He smirked across the sunlit room.

"How many rounds did we go?" Remus asked.

"Twelve with Carlos. At least ten with Jorge. I stopped counting after that." Remus took a deep breath.

"Was there really a worm?" he asked at last, feeling rather foolish. "In the bottle, I mean."

"Yup."

"Did I... eat it?"

"Yup."

Remus blinked very slowly and deliberately. He was sitting back on the couch now, the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows. Dandelion Boy got up out of the morally offensive green recliner and padded across the room to the door, where a brown leather jacket was hanging on a hook. He took the jacket down and began digging through the pockets. Replacing the jacket, he padded over to Remus and sat down on the couch next to him.

"Here's the money you had on you," he said, passing Remus a small stack of carefully folded bills. "I just took it out of your pockets before I burned your pants." He looked up at Remus, a grave expression on his face. "Seriously. They were disgusting."

Remus glanced down at the bills. "You can count it if you want," Dandelion Boy said with a shrug.

Remus took the bills and put them into his new pocket without looking at them.

"And here's your cut," he continued, passing Remus a large wad of crumpled bills from his other hand. Remus frowned as he took them. They were all twenty dollar bills.

"My cut?" he repeated.

Dandelion Boy grinned. "Well, after Carlos, the boys didn't reckon on you having another bottle in you. We cleaned up real well."

Remus stared at the bills in his hand. He was holding easily over three hundred dollars. He transferred his look of disbelief up to the Dandelion Boy and something clicked in his brain.

"You're the Space Cowboy," he said dumbly. The boy laughed.

"Yes I am," he replied. "But my friends call me Jack." He held out his hand. Remus took it.

"I'm Remus," he said.

The Owl bar closed down at nine o'clock on weeknights. In fact, pretty much the entire town closed up after it got dark. Jack often joked to his friends in Albuquerque, where he went to school, that they rolled up the sidewalks and turned off the oxygen after dark in Truth or Consequences, where he was from.

He followed the Brit out of the bar and watched him. He couldn't believe the man was still on his feet. He'd never have walked a straight line for the county sheriff, that was for sure, but he was still upright and mobile, which, considering he had a beer, the better part of a bottle of tequila, and most of a bottle of gin sloshing around inside him, was pretty damned impressive.

Jack leaned against the wall of the Owl as he watched Dusty Martin and Jose Romero hoisting the Montoya brothers into the bed of Dusty's prized red Dodge Ram.

"Don't you even think about hurling in my truck!" Dusty commanded as he climbed into the cab. Jack smirked.

"Some people call me Maurice! Wooooo-wooooo!" the Brit cried tunelessly as he relieved himself by the corner of the building while staring up at the wide New Mexico sky which was quickly turning from navy blue to black. He was looking at the moon where it was rising over the mesas in the distance. It was almost full, and it was big and round and yellow. It seemed close enough you could just reach out and touch it.

"Hey!" Jack called, sauntering over towards the man. "Hey!"

The guy turned and looked at him. He had enormous eyes.

"Hey yourself," he said, with only a hint of a slur to his voice.

"You got someplace to stay tonight?" Jack asked.

The man smiled and flung his arms wide, indicating the landscape dotted with chaimisa, mesquite, and prickly pear. Jack smiled back.

"Well, I'm not sure I can compete with that," he admitted. "But I've got a couch if you don't mind something a little more plebeian." The man seemed to consider this.

"Lead on, MacDuff," he said at last.

Jack led him over to his own truck and opened the door for him to climb in. The Brit was still humming that Steve Miller Band song, which amused Jack to no end.

They drove the eight or so miles out to his place in silence. The Brit was leaning his head against the truck window, but he hadn't yet passed out. He was staring out into the darkness at the moon.

When they arrived, Jack had to help the Brit out of the car. The man leaned on him heavily, and Jack was surprised to feel his ribs poking through his thin shirt. The guy was hardly more than a sack of skin and bones.

"Thanks Pads," he murmured quietly. Sleep was quickly overtaking him. Jack slung one of the other man's arms around his shoulders and supported him as they swerved towards the steps up to the front porch.

Jack moved carefully, making sure that the Brit picked his feet up enough to move to the next step. About half-way up, however, he stumbled, and they crashed into the wall. Jack laughed a little as he tried to straighten up, his back against the rough boards of his house. The Brit was leaning heavily on top of him, and he too gave a half-hearted little chuckle.

"Clumsy Padfoot," he murmured, burying his head against Jack's collar bone, his short tawny hair tickling his chin. "You're drunk."

"That's the pot calling the kettle black," Jack retorted, gently pushing the Brit upright again. "I'd say you're drunker than I am."

The man wobbled slightly and laughed. "Don't be a prat," he said. "Werewolves don't get drunk." Jack shrugged, hoisting the man's arm around his shoulders. Before they could get moving again, the man leaned forward and kissed him. His mouth was warm and soft. He smelled like dust and tasted like gin.

Very gently, Jack pushed him away. The Brit sighed. His eyes were closed. They managed to get the rest of the way up the stairs and through the door before he was really truly asleep.

"Who's Padfoot?" Jack asked as Remus smoothed out the twenty dollar bills on his knee. Remus froze, inside and out.

"Who?" he asked unconvincingly.

"Padfoot," Jack repeated. "You thought I was him last night."

Remus closed his eyes as the memory came back to him and the shame of it burned its way up to his face.

"Bloody hell," he cursed under his breath. "I knew there was a reason I don't get drunk." When he opened his eyes, Jack was sitting in the recliner from hell again, watching him.

"I take that to mean he's a real person then?" Jack said. "I wasn't really sure. Padfoot isn't a very common nickname, you know."

"He wasn't a very common person," Remus replied stiffly. He hadn't said the name aloud in over three years. Hadn't heard it spoken aloud in at least as long. To hear it rolling off this boy's lips like thunder in a summer storm shook him.

"I'm sorry..." he said finally, unable to meet his eyes. "I didn't mean to..."

Jack shrugged. "No big deal," he said calmly. "Just didn't want you to think it was someone else you were kissing while you were kissing me."

Remus blinked at him.

"So, does that mean that the werewolf part is true too?" Jack continued curiously.

Remus continued to stare at him. His mind had stopped working entirely.

"Is that why the pictures in your books move?"

Remus stared out the passenger side window of the cab of Jack's truck. He had, of course, told him everything, thought he wasn't exactly sure why. Jack had accepted the fact that yes, Remus was a werewolf and yes, he was also a wizard with a quiet curiosity and suspension of disbelief usually reserved for the very young. It had seemed like the only option at the time, though once the last vestiges of the hangover had disappeared, Remus realized he could have just cast a simple memory charm to make him forget. Somehow though, the thought of being forgotten was worse than the thought of any trouble he might get into from being remembered.

Jack had insisted on driving Remus the 300 or so odd miles to Santa Fe and they were still about 60 miles shy of their destination, just driving into Albuquerque, when he asked the question that Remus didn't want to answer.

"So this Padfoot, he broke your heart."

Actually, it was a statement more than a question, but Remus felt it still deserved an answer. After all, Jack was already taking an awful lot on faith.

"He betrayed me," Remus answered quietly, carefully, checking all the time to make sure that the barriers were still up within him, still holding strong. He'd spent the last three years building them, and he wasn't about to let them come crashing down now.

Jack was silent. One arm rested easily on top of the steering wheel, doing what little steering was necessary on the wide, flat, straight New Mexico highway. His other arm was propped against the window, his head leaning on his hand. The window was rolled down ever so slightly, and the rush of passing wind ruffled his ridiculous dandelion hair.

"When was this?" Jack asked.

Remus sighed.

"Three years ago," he said softly. Three years, eight months, fifteen days, and countless hours, minutes, seconds. An eternity that began again with every new day and stretched forward into infinity. Harry would be five years old in a matter of days. James and Lily would have celebrated their sixth wedding anniversary a few weeks ago. And he...

He was riding in a truck several thousand miles away from his home with a man he barely knew after getting completely and totally smashed for the first time in his life with three hundred nineteen dollars to his name and no plans other than to find somewhere safe to spend the next 36 hours or so.

"Has there been anybody since then?" Jack asked.

"No," Remus replied tersely. "There's never been anyone else."

"That's my school," Jack said suddenly, pointing out Remus' window towards a large sports complex sitting on top of a hill. It said "The Pit -- Home of the Lobos" on the side in six foot high letters.

"University of New Mexico," Jack said. "I'm off for the summer, though."

"What do you study?" Remus asked.

"Double major in anthropology and ancient literature with a specialty in myth and legend," Jack replied. Remus stared at him. Jack glanced over and laughed at his expression.

"What? You didn't think everyone in this state was an illiterate red neck, did you?" Remus willed himself to believe that he had not.

"Am I a myth?" he asked after a while.

"Well, I sure as hell would've said so before two nights ago," Jack replied honestly. "But now you've got me itching to get back to school." Jack glanced over at him again. "You made me realize there's an awful lot I don't know."

Remus considered this, and wondered if the revelation worked both ways.

"You're the Lobos -- the wolves," he said at last. Jack smirked.

"Yes indeed. And proud of it."

They reached Santa Fe after the sun had set. They crested the top of a very steep hill and Remus caught his first glimpse of the city, sprawled out like a pile of sparkling jewels in the dark sand. It was beautiful.

Jack navigated the town like a local, much to Remus' amazement. The roads didn't seem to have been planned so much as just paved over when the cow paths got wide enough. They undulated and wound their way through the heart of the City Different without regard to cardinal directions, consistent naming conventions, or the bother of actually reaching anywhere. They stopped in front of an adobe compound on the north side of town, where the hills rolled up into the Sangre de Cristos. Jack ignored Remus' protestations entirely, and paid for a casita out of a wad of bills that he explained were his take from Remus' exploits in T or C.

The casita turned out to be just that: a little house, with a tiny kitchenette, a table and two chairs, a couch, and a double bed. The walls were real adobe, two feet thick in places, and they exuded age and stability. Remus mused that if he vanished the furniture for the length of the change and cast a few silencing spells, the room was probably strong enough to hold him. He wouldn't have to use the chains.

Jack was singing softly to himself as he poked around the little room, looking into the bathroom, flipping the TV on and off, peering out each of the windows in turn.

"You're the cutest thing that I ever did see... Really love your peaches wanna shake your tree..."

"Why are you doing all this for me?" Remus asked urgently, and not for the first time, as Jack poked curiously through the cupboards in the tiny kitchen.

The first time he'd asked, Jack had replied that he'd enjoyed watching Remus humiliate the Montoya brothers. The second time, he'd said he was just a good Samaritan.

"You don't know me," Remus persisted, unconvinced by either answer. "You certainly don't owe me anything..."

Jack sighed. "I like you," he said with a shrug, "and you seemed lonely. Lost. You just looked like you needed somebody." He closed the cupboard and walked over to where Remus was sitting on the bed. "And I," he said lightly, "happen to be somebody."

Remus scowled, and Jack laughed.

"You can't quite believe it, can you?" Jack asked.

"What?"

"That someone would like you, just for you. You're so busy working out all the reasons that someone might not want you around, that you can't even tell when someone does." He looked directly into Remus' eyes, his own expression inscrutable and calm. "Want you around, that is," he finished.

Remus silently began to panic as Jack, the Dandelion Boy, the Space Cowboy, leaned towards him. The evening sunlight glinted in through the window and flitted across his face as he moved forward, through his hair, illuminating his eyes... Oh my god, Remus thought very seriously, he's going to kiss me.

Every muscle in Remus' body tensed, like an animal ready to bolt, but before he could decide between fight or flight, it was too late. Jack was there, pressing his lips firmly against Remus'. The kiss was like a desert thunder storm, deep and strong, intense and impressive, brief but vital, live-giving, and as basic as it is possible to be. It made Remus realize he was not the walking dead as he had for so long believed, and he found himself staring into a chasm, a great black gash in his soul that so desperately needed mending, but that he had never ventured near enough to see.

Jack finally pulled away. His face was still terribly close, and Remus could feel the warmth of his breath as it brushed across his face. He realized he was trembling.

"What was that for?" he whispered, his own voice sounding far away in his ears.

Jack smirked at him.

"A little hair of the dog?"

So the songs have been sung

and the flowers have gone

and the wind has all blown away,

and I see the sun

on my Dandelion Boy

as he leaves at the end of the day.