this is very long and i translated it quite quickly without reading the full plot so if there are any mistakes please let me know!
originally a larry fic by fondleeds on ao3
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'i have understood how the scar becomes a star, i have felt the flake of fire fall, miraculous and pentecostal. my yesterdays walk with me. they keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.'
william golding, free fall.
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cape breton, nova scotia. 1968.
the tail end of winter is a screaming whip.
its curve carries with it a flurry of chilled, skin-prickling gusts, stirring the waves into chasms of navy and stark white, shooting foamy residue up to the clouds, hovering low and grey and spitting mist. heady squalls bring prickly seafoam up onto deck, skidding and scraping along his cheeks and turning them bright red. for miles both left and right there's nothing but ocean and the grey-white of the sky, and with every dip the ferry takes down a heightened wave, it feels as though for that stomach-swooping moment, they'll be swallowed whole by the sea and its gaping mouth.
troye stands at the tip of the deck, hips cradled by the slippery white of the bow, so much so that if he leant forward enough, if he lost his balance just for a moment, he'd topple into the thrashing water and be lost under the waves. everything smells of raw salt and rain, of damp sand despite their distance from the shore. another billowed gust pulses up from the water, and it shakes the thin glaze over his eyes, pricks at it with cold nails. shaking, he pulls his coat tighter around himself, tucking his shoulders against his exposed neck, where the skin is goose-pimpled and thin, veins gone blue and purple.
"hey!"
he turns slowly, blinks against the howl of another squall, the rain falling like sleet now. one of the ferry-men is hurrying towards him, white-faced and dark-eyed, looking reproachful and sour as he shudders against the cold.
"get inside, will you, b'y?" he says. the ferry dips again, and the fragile bones in troye's body creak and dent against the hard lines of the boat. "you'll catch your death out here, tell y' right fuckin' now. c'mon, then."
"sorry," troye says, bristled and stiff. "i wanted to watch the water."
"you'll be swimming in't in a minute if you don't get inside," the man says, already retreating backward to the cabin, rolling his eyes. "lord knows i'm not jumpin' in after you."
troye's eyelashes are sticky with salt, the thin of his neck wet and dewy with chill, a slick silver. the ocean roars again, and through a spray of shaky mist, the shadows of land blur into reality. with another sweeping lull, the ferry chugs along the rough valleys of a wave, and the rise of troye' stomach feels looped with rope, threatening to fling him backwards, to tug so sharply that he's catapulted back to the mainland. but then the ferry rights itself, and the rope cuts loose, disintegrates and turns his insides to a queasy mess, like it was never even there.
his eyes gloss over in the wind, far removed from what once was, and what is going to be.
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the shoreline is a wonky, dented horseshoe of a thing, with the harbour nestled at the centre of its rusty heart, and the rhythm of the waves hitting the algae-covered beams is its weighted, thudding heartbeat. long strips of overturned beach reside either side of it, damp, dark grains of sand tangled with maroon and olive shreds of seaweed, some of the tattered strips floating out into the water and wrapping themselves around the shaky structure of the wharf. tiny homes dot the edges of the beach, some so close to the water that the vicious spray of seafoam knocks on front doors, rests on stoops. the terrain is flat and muddled with sand, until, in the near distance, the earth jumps in a sudden elevation of jagged mountains, green and stone, of swooped hills undertoned with red and orange and earth, stretching up into the shadow of foggy clouds that drape themselves along the treeline, starting a steady decline on to the town. the cliffs are grey and wrinkled with dark lines, and they hold cape breton captive.
