Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia etc etc, but I do love the little Island mentioned herein :3
—
The younger man showed him about his Island with an evident pride. Every barely suppressed smile, every time those purple eyes lit up when he complimented the foliage or his people, every brush of his finger tips seem to say, This is me. This is the little, private piece of me that I keep just for you. Even when others try to peek at it, try to share it, every thing you see is meant only for you and me.
The thought's so pretty he's almost ashamed of it and instantly disposes of it.
He's showed around the Cabot trail, through Ben Eion and Loch Lohan and Baddeck and Louisburg, the boy's Highlands that remind him quite a bit of his own. No matter where they go, if there are trees (and there are trees, millions of them, how could so many trees fit on such a tiny island?) they're all burst into life. Each one seems to be trying to out pretty the other, all opting to cast aside the muddy fall normality that most trees on the mainland choose to adopt. Instead, bright, crimson reds the colour of newly spilled blood, vivid yellows that rival that of any single flower in the world, and the freshest green he'd ever seen this time of year all mix and compete with each other and countless other colours in perfect harmony. The boy (and really he's just a boy compared to him, just a bairn) tells him that this is really one of the best times of the year to visit the Island and he believes him. Millions of pretty little dead things, all fall long.
They go to the steel towns, the mining and fishing towns. Dominion, Glace Bay, New Waterford, all of the different parts of Sydney. It seems almost endless. The countless little neighbourhoods named after the mine's the men toiled and died in, the company houses still inhabited by their descendents, the buildings sunk into the ground by the mine shafts rotting and hidden below. The boy talked about the many mining strikes, about how his health care system was built around a program used by Glace Bay miners long before some reverend politician Tommy Douglas visited to see how well it worked, about the widow peaks still on some of the houses that once belonged to fishermen, and he found (he knew he would) he could more then relate to the death invovled.
He knew full well how some little dead things aren't very pretty at all, but are still very important to the life blood of a larger, much prettier little thing that was still dying.
At night they lie on the back step, or in on a dock near one of the inner lakes or an empty street or a long, secluded paved drive way and watch both sides of the sunset. One half of the sky a deep, near-black navy filled with dozens of dozens of little pinpricks of light, the other a brilliant display of crimson and orange and robins egg blue. A day not quite gone yet, but quietly fading into night. Two pretty little dead things plus a billion stars that don't know it yet.
This night they are in the grass in the Highlands watching these deaths, quietly side by side in the long soft green. They are miles from any houses or buildings or roads that aren't made of dirt, and the only light source is the brilliant quarter moon over head. It's rather hard, looking at both sides of the dusk, but the surreal contrast is well worth it.
"Tha gaol agam ort," says Matthew quietly. There is a pause different from the silence before.
He finds he wants to smother those words, keep them shut up in that boy's chest so that he doesn't have to remember that he can't remember, and he does with his mouth and his tongue and his teeth. Matthew helps by misinterpreting this action, by kissing back and gripping at his sweater, riding up his kilt and putting his leg there, and by being quiet enough for him when he undresses and fucks the lad right there in the open air, the newborn moon and half-dead sun, the millions of dead little stars and still dying day watching their every move and gasp and groan.
Cape Breton is a just a pretty little dying place filled with pretty little dead and dying things, Scotland thinks (knows), but the prettiest and deadest is the language that he had created and loved and yet doesn't hardly know.
—
Apparently, Cape Breton Island is one of the only places that still has natively spoken Gaelic.
Tha gaol agam ort—'I love you' in Scottish Canadian Gaelic
Bairn—A kid, basically.
Please let me know if anything here's inaccurate or just plain bullshit! I wrote this with out the aid of the Internet or references.
[edit]
Thank you to the two sweethearts who reviewed~ You guys really make my day 3