"Do you ever think about getting married, Remus?"

Remus looked up from the dusty table, staring at Sirius with cocked brows. "No, Sirius, I do not," he said. "Mostly because we are two gentlemen and that is not all together… accepted here."

Sirius sighed, placing down his teacup and sitting down beside Remus. "I am aware of that. But is it not simply the principle that counts?"

Remus shook his head and stared at the table fixedly. "Why are you even talking about marriage anyway, Sirius? You only marry if you are in love, unless it is arranged."

Sirius' eyes glinted mischievously. "But this is not arranged."

The other man looked up curiously, staring at Sirius as though he was confirming the unspoken words that Sirius had implied. "But if it is not arranged, then…?"

"Yes," he said, standing up again and placing his hands on Remus' shoulders. "I do love you, Remus."

Remus furrowed his brows, suppressing the urge to turn around in his chair and smile up at Sirius. He opened his mouth to talk, but Sirius squeezed his shoulders reassuringly and interrupted him.

"That's all right," he said. "You do not have to say it back. I know that you don't love me yet, and that is all right with me, Remus. The time will come." Sirius took Remus' hand in his and stroked it as the tawny-haired man stared at his shoes.

"I… thank you." he finally mumbled out shamefacedly, not smiling.

Sirius brushed his thumb over his boyfriend's palm. "I completely understand it. I am still who I was when I met you. Loud, sort of egotistical, selfish. Sometimes I think… I think that you deserve better."

Remus' head snapped up and locked their eyes sharply. "Do not say that," he told him sternly. "You never were the gentlemen I saw you as when we first met – I had judged you. You really were everything you are now – caring, considerate, sympathetic. Not any of that other drivel."

Sirius smiled softly, his grip on Remus' hand never lessening. "I remember that day. We were about fourteen, weren't we?"

Remus nodded, furling his hand around his cup.

"I think I may have been almost fourteen." he corrected.

"I was horrible to you," said Sirius, shaking his head. "We had just moved in to our estate, and a few months later my parents died. And that is when I became friends with James. I knew you first."

Remus nodded. "Yes, but we certainly did not befriend each other first. I was out reading in my front yard under that big apple tree that was in the middle, when I saw your family and all this royal luggage rolling up the road in a huge coach." he squinted to remember.

"I had thought that you were a know-it-all. I certainly was not very nice when my mother told me to leave the house while they ordered the butler to furnish the place correctly and I saw you reading," Sirius said. "I had… already known that I was homosexual. But my parents had not. Life was still… livable, then."

"Our luggage is in the back," Mrs. Black informed sternly to the driver of the coach. "Be very careful with it! And do not drop things." She pursed her lips as she played fondly with her gloves.

"Do we have to live in that house? It is so gloomy, Mum." Sirius complained with a wrinkled frown.

Mrs. Black sent her son a glare. "Your grandmothers lived there, Sirius. Are you not honored to be a Black?"

Sirius squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, ignorant of his mother's hard gaze, and lifted his shoulders half-heartedly in a shrug.

Mrs. Black tutted loudly. "You are intolerable Sirius," she snapped, and then furrowed her eyebrows at the driver penetratingly. "Stop here." She told the driver.

The coach promptly stopped, the driver leaving his seat and crunching his feet on the gravel as he opened the back to heave out all of the bags.

"Orion," Mrs. Black barked to her husband. "Why don't you tell the butler where to arrange the furniture?" she moved over to her son. "Now. You, Sirius, should go and take a walk. We need to bring back the Black into our home, right now the only thing it's sporting is dust…"

"All right," Sirius said immediately, hopping out of the coach and walking along the dirt with his hands burrowed into his pockets. He nodded courteously to the butler who was fumbling along the handles on the bags, before blindly whistling along the paths.

Sirius rounded the corner of a crowd of trees, skirting the underbrush that guarded them, his eyes falling upon a large front yard and an estate with a boy sitting under a large tree that provided him shade.

Sirius eagerly walked up to the boy, but tried to be casual as he walked up to the enormous apple tree.

"Hello." said the boy underneath the leaves, looking up from a large book in his lap. He had brown, blondish hair with amber eyes that sparkled like stones in the sun, and a tentative smile that Sirius liked.

"Hi," Sirius responded, his eyes flickering to the book that was still grasped tightly in the boy's fingertips. "What are you reading?"

The boy shrugged. "Just a novel," he looked up at Sirius hesitantly. "My name is Remus Lupin."

Sirius wanted to chuckle at the name, but he remembered his own and refrained from mocking Remus.

"I am Sirius Black. Do you live here?"

Lupin nodded, and without waiting for a response from Sirius, he ducked his head back under the book.

Sirius realized that he was lingering awkwardly, and hurried to make conversation that he knew the other boy didn't want to make. "Do you want me to call you Remus or Lupin?"

"Either is all right. I do not care."

Sirius nodded. "Okay… Lupin." He did not like something about Remus. He was awfully distant and anti-social, the exact opposite of himself.

Remus shrugged. "I suppose Lupin is more proper."

Sirius snorted. "My parents are all about proper. Is that your thing, Lupin?"

He looked up, eyeing Sirius curiously. "It is only polite. It is what we do here," he told him obviously. He raised an eyebrow and tilted his book slightly. "I saw your coach coming in. Where did you come from?"

Sirius sneered slightly. "I did not grow up in an area where we drink out of plumbing waste and bathe in waterfalls, Lupin! I was only a few towns away! Do not speak to me as though I am intellectually challenged!"

Remus shrugged lightly. "All right. I was just curious to where you had come from."

"Put your curiosity somewhere else." Sirius snapped, jerking his hands out of his pockets and stomping away from the front yard. He felt two pairs of amber eyes on his back until he vanished out of sight.

"It still must have been terrible, Sirius." Remus replied. "I could have at least looked up from my book to talk to you."

"That is… all right."

"When I told my father about you, he said that you were a Black, and that Blacks had reputations. I had thought you would be one of them." Remus said apologetically.

"My parents certainly where Blacks. And sometimes – while it pains me to admit this, but it is true – I did act like a Black to you."

"It was second nature, Sirius," Remus brushed off. "I was not very nice to you myself. I remember once that I told you 'I will try being nicer if you try being smarter'."

Sirius shrugged silently, before cocking a brow. "I think I got a little louder and a little nicer when my parents died." he concluded.

"What happened to them? It could not have been old age, Sirius." Remus inquired inquisitively.

The black-haired man shook his head. "It wasn't," he confirmed. "I think it may have been revenge by someone. My parents were rather… careless, when it came to making adversaries."

"That is… horrifying."

"Maybe," Sirius agreed, but he had a smile on his face. "But they did deserve it. And life got a lot better then. James offered me to live in the Potter Estate. I was only fifteen at the time, so I accepted."

"You have been living in that dark house alone for more than a month now," James said gravely. "And you are only fifteen."

"I am fine," Sirius brushed off. "With my parents gone the house is much more pleasant."

"Nobody cleans the house, nobody cooks, nobody washes the clothes. How will you live?" James asked concernedly, pressing the subject.

Sirius put his hands on his hips. "What are you suggesting?"

The other boy held out his hand calmly, waiting for Sirius to shake it. "That you move into our estate."

Sirius was quite taken aback by the proposal, but only raised his eyebrows in contemplation at the hand still outstretched to him. Sirius took it.

"All right. I will."

James smiled, releasing the other boy's fingers and traipsing back to his estate to inform his parents of Sirius' response.

"I am glad," Remus said. "You would be living off of bread scraps and washes in the lakes." He grinned at the thought. Sirius prodded him.

"Honestly," he said. "I was considering turning down James' offer."

"That would have been very foolish of you. Despite our own nonexistent friendship, I would have offered you a home as well." Remus admitted.

"I would have walked away from that offer years ago," Sirius confessed.

"I would not have expected you to be jumping with joy to move into our basement. It does have a leak in the wall, after all, and floods in rainstorms."

Sirius wrinkled his nose up. "Eh," he took Remus' empty cup and brought it to the sink. "After that, I was slightly kinder to you, though. The Potters were a lot… better."

"Slightly," Remus emphasized with a smile. "I remember how you first talked to me after you moved out of your estate."

"Lupin, are you reading again?"

"Different book." Remus murmured distractedly, readjusting on the tree bark.

Sirius rolled his eyes and tutted.

"You do not have to be so obnoxious to me, you know." Remus said from behind his book quietly, and Sirius snarled.

"I reserve the right to be obnoxious." Sirius snapped back, wondering briefly in the back of his mind why he had even visited the boy in the first place.

"I have already heard that insult, Black," Remus replied airily. "You will have to try harder to offend me."

"Think you are funny?"

"No," Remus admitted, flipping a page. "Just truthful. I would have thought that after spending time around a family like yours and the Malfoys you would have better cheek."

"How dare you," Sirius muttered. "I hate my family."

"You sure are a lot like them."

"We were very silly then. Perhaps unintelligent is a more specific word." Remus said, laughing slightly. "I am taking a bath, Sirius." he got up from the table and vanished into the darkness of the house.

Sirius sighed, getting up from his chair as well with a creak on the floor as he stepped over to the door to take a walk.

His eyes grazed over the Evans Estate when he walked farther along the path, the rippling grass and probably the still furious parents arguing inside of where their daughter left to. He was just about to leave again when his eyes fell upon a boy that was staring forlornly at the door and sitting on the porch steps longingly.

"Hello." Sirius greeted to the boy, who looked up.

He had black hair, slightly longer than his ears and stringy – a sign of grease building up in between the strands – with a pale face.

"Hello." the boy replied half-heartedly.

"Are you… waiting for someone?" Sirius questioned.

"I suppose you could say that."

"Who are you?"

"Snape," the boy said. "Severus Snape."

Sirius studied Snape, realizing that he was about his own age, but before he could make sure, Snape talked first.

"I am surprised that you are talking to me," he said. "Most people ignore me because I am… different."

Sirius tutted. "I know that feeling."

"Yes? What makes you abnormal?"

"I'm… homosexual." Sirius admitted, shrugging.

"Ah," Snape said. "I am simply… unattractive. People ignore me."

"How ignorant of them," Sirius lowered himself onto the porch steps as well. "Have you ever been in love, Snape?" Snape nodded meekly. "Hmm, horrible isn't it? Who was she?"

He looked at the grass. "Miss Evans."

Sirius' eyes widened in shock before he awkwardly replied. "Oh, er… my friend, is…"

"With her," Snape finished with a sigh. "I heard that they ran away."

"I am sorry," Sirius sympathized lackadaisically. "I should go."

He ran back to his own estate, where Remus was sitting on the musty couch curled up against a few books. Sirius closed the door behind him a soft smile as his eyes fell upon the tawny-haired gentlemen.

He lowered himself onto the couch, drawing his arms protectively around Remus. "You finished your bath, I suppose?"

"Mmhm."

"I love you." Sirius told him gently.

"Are you trying to make me feel guilty?"

"No, of course not!" Sirius defended hastily. "I just like saying it."

"Gentlemen should not say that to other men." Remus said helplessly.

"I know," Sirius said, snuggling closer to him with a grin. "But I have never really cared much for the rules."