A/N: Inspired by some books I've read recently, one photograph from 1964, and a great deal of thinking and feeling.

Title comes from 'Sweet Sixteen' by the Fureys & Davey Arthur.

They will never be certain, afterwards, which of them proposes the idea to head for Connemara. The originator of such an idea hardly matters, when the sentiment of it sings to something flowing deep in their blood.

(It was Christine who proposed it, for the sake of his health. For the sake of fragile lungs weakened further by petrol fumes and smoke, and some part of her whispers of consumptives seeking out mountain air, but she ignores it. Atlantic air is bound to help him, when it is not a disease, when it is inherent and not acquired.)

She drives. He dozes and listens to Romantic music and ruminates on illness and young death and accidents on the water, all properly Romantic topics for rumination.

It is bright, the sun distilled through air, as if he might squint, and find the world cast gold.

Her hands on the steering wheel are pale and firm, steady. He might envy her her confidence, maybe, if he were not fighting so hard against the urge to reach out, and brush his fingers over hers.

They find themselves in Baile na hAbhann. He has never spoken Irish in his life and she translates the name for him with a bemused smile. Town on the river, Baile na hAbhann. He repeats it in his accent softened by English education, such as it was, once upon a time, feels the weight of the words on his tongue and something loosens deep in his throat. He tests them again, and they are light.

They do not intend to stay here, not in this quiet little village but maybe one like it, but they visit the graveyard for the sake of his Romantic ruminations, because if a graveyard built on rock looking out over the vast Atlantic is not Romantic, then surely nothing can be.

He idly plucks at his violin while she sketches a rough-hewn sandstone marker, her hair soft as silk, but he will not disturb her concentration, not when her eyes are focused on words he can't quite read.

There is a quality in the air that whispers of sea spray high against the rocks, and crashing waves. A murmur of how things might be, if the breeze were not so gentle.

He sets the bow down as she finishes, sets the sketchbook aside, and twines their fingers.

Her lips brushing his are gentle.

He swallows and smiles into her mouth.

(This is what she wants, and this is what he will give her.)

Quietly they slip away, move on, but now there is a fullness in his heart beyond words, and he cradles his violin in his lap, and her sketchbook, and she drives.

Neither of them speak. There are some things beyond the capacity of language.

They find themselves in a village with barely a name, with barely a graveyard only tumbling headstones, with the same wide ocean, stretching on and on as far as the eye can see, sunset rippling golden upon the water. A thatched cottage with whitewashed walls. A lease, but leases are temporary, and in a little while they will decide to make it permanent.

(They do not know that, not just yet.)

They sleep, and hold each other close in the darkness. She wakes to the thin light of dawn, sees it behind her eyes but does not open them, just presses closer to him, to this frail and yet surprisingly strong man, and kisses his warm skin, and listens to each soft inhale, each sighed exhale.

She wakes just to hear him breathe, just to feel him beside her.

(There was a time she feared. Feared losing him, having barely gained him. And maybe the world would say she moved too fast, but when you know you know, and he has grown too old to die young, but time is spun and set and it would always be too soon. If all bringing him here does is spin time out a little longer...)

"Mo croí," she breathes, words remembered, half-forgotten, the sentiment just the same. Mo croí, my heart, her heart, held safe within the beating of his own.

He sets himself the task of mastering the language, this language that those who shared his blood a hundred years ago and more (and less) tried to stamp out. There is a vindictive irony in it, that he was not for them, but nor were these words, and nor were Christine's people, but their blood has come to this, to him, and these words he will learn the shape of, their weight and how to roll them.

Simple things he shapes out first. Ragwort becomes buachalán, jumper turns to geansaí and in the evening she knits for him, sitting by the fire, flames dancing over her face. "Don't want you to get cold," and the trace of that fear lives beneath her voice as he eases the needles from her hands, and smiles for her. "I'll never be cold," he whispers back, "not with you," and he feels no guilt over his new words but there is guilt for bringing her fear.

Tea turns to tae but tea is easily softened into such. What she calls furze and he calls gorse they now call whin though that's not Irish either, just a form of choice, one word in place of two and they share it. He adopts agus and tá and níl as if he was born to them, throws defiance on the last one and squares his jaw until her smile spreads across her face as she kisses him. An baile mór agus an Gorta Mór, city and Famine. Stormúil agus scamallach, picked up from weather on the crackling radio. Máthair is leanbh, mother and baby, the lady who wheels a pram in the early morning, and has smiled at them every day since they came here. Baile na hAbhann the first of it, agus an Dochtúir Nollaig de Brún.

(The swelling pride inside, the first time he strings a sentence.)

She sounds the words out and it makes something glow deep within her to hear him breathe them back, more sacred than any vow.

(Neither of them are given to vows.)

He goes for afternoon walks, no matter the weather, never the same two days in a row. He brings his violin, a book of poetry tucked into his pocket, and sometimes he settles amidst the tumbling headstones, and plays to dispel the loneliness of the dead. Sometimes she finds him there, and sits, back to broken limestone, and sketches him with a light hand, charcoal on paper, the line of him, the height of him, there among the stones, his eyes closed and head tilted back.

Sometimes he wanders down to the sea. The beach is not truly a beach, is sharp shards of shale more than sand, but there are rocks and as the birds tumble above him, and as the wind whips in his ears, whistles through cracks in the old stone walls winding through the land, he sets bow to strings, and plays, that wind carrying the delicate notes out over the water, an offering to a god, an appeasement for restless spirits, an atonement for what those earlier carriers of his blood has done, a declaration that he is here, and he will go on, and for all he has done there is love throbbing in his heart, love for a girl who desires only to save him, and the wind carries the notes to her ears, brings tears to her eyes and blurs the images forming on the paper beneath her hands, woven from her touch.

He brings her flowers from his walk, only ever three or four, precious little bouquets of purple and blue and yellow and white. She cradles each of them close, and kisses his cheek. His touch is gentle, winding them into her hair, as if she were a goddess or a queen, and his crooked smile catches her heart, his lips soft pressed to her forehead. Such little things that make him happy, so precious in their smallness, but the world shines out of his eyes.

What place is there for grand gestures when they have this? When they can have each other?

(His chest is no better, but nor is it worse, and in their own kitchen, in the darkness of soft light, his gauntness is not so terrifying.)

She sketches him, as he sits at the fire studying sheet music, glasses held carefully in place though he has no nose to perch them on. He has always been far-sighted, has always had slightly less sight in one eye than the other, and his eyes are too delicate even for contact lenses, but when he studies notes on paper he is like any other man, the concentration firm in his mouth.

She sketches, the square of his jaw, the angle of his cheek, the wave in his hair combed back, and her fingers trace the strong nose he might have had in another world, in another life, the curve of it, the angle. She has always been good at mathematics, and this is where it comes in most, in her imaginings. But the Erik on the page is not her Erik, he is an approximation of her Erik, and for all that he is whole she cannot love him more than the man before her, the man she has and not a fantasy. There is nothing to love in a fantasy when what she has is real, and in his reality he is more beautiful than any whole man, no matter what he might believe, no matter what he might fear.

She crumples the paper up, and with a flick of her wrist condemns it to the fire. It crackles amongst the flames, and he raises his head to look at her, one eyebrow arched, but she shakes her head to his unasked question.

She does not need for him to be whole, when what she needs is for him to be well.

He breathes his love for her into her skin, breathes it in English and Irish both, breathes it in French, and Spanish, and Latin, and Arabic. His lips are soft against her neck, as he whispers, but he does not need to speak of love, not when she feels it in him every time he takes her hand, every time he brushes the hair from her eyes, every time he wraps his arms around her and draws her close. His love for her is in his touch, just as her love for him is in every morning kiss and every smile into his neck, and every time she lays her head against his chest to hear him, and the soft inner workings of his life. The words are the most beautiful of formalities, when they declare their love every day in a thousand tiny ways.

He dozes, afterwards, stretched upon the floor by the fire, and she cradles his head in her lap, and reads to him, and sings, softly, old songs, the language of her fathers that he has learned for her, to ease his sleep and so he knows he is not alone, so he knows she will never leave him. How could she ever leave him, when he is the greatest thing she has ever known?

(Behind his eyes he feels her soft smile, hair spun gold and blue eyes gentle, and there is no pain, no wondering, only the certainty that this is what they have, and there is nothing else he would ever wish for, but to have her.)

They have no television, no internet. Only a crackling radio and they often have no idea what day it is unless she cycles into the village for a paper. They do not need days, do not need the outside world when the outside world would have torn them apart, but the paper is how they know about storms, how they know to be ready.

Electricity knocked out, the old wind-up record player, fire guttering almost to embers with the wind whistling down the chimney and he sets Rachmaninoff to play, soft winding piano, and draws her into his arms, his hand warm curled around her hip. She lays her head against his chest, and closes her eyes, and with his face buried in her hair they sway, and feel like the last people in the world.

The wind howls, the music drifts. They are their own island of peace, kept safe in the centre.

His hands are cool and strong wrapped around hers. The firelight flickering over his face casts it into relief, shadows hiding the ravaged features, green glowing through the brown of his eyes. If she could she would hold him in this moment, would capture his face just like this and keep it, always. The slight bow of his top lip, the curve of the bottom, angles of his cheekbones, the deep-set eyes, glowing though there is no gold in them, only what the fire has put there, and the silver in his hair (always a little long, combed back with his hand in moments when his hands cannot be still) shines through the black. The hollow where his nose might have been, a faint depression.

She hardly dares to breathe, as if it might dispel him, her eyes drinking in every bit of him, the new softness edging around his mouth, that mouth she has kissed and that her lips tingle now to kiss again, the wrinkles webbing beneath his eyes that she has traced with the lightest of fingertips.

She would sketch him if she could, trace him and keep him like this, if it would not mean letting go of him, if it would not mean moving.

Slowly, carefully, she brings his fingers to her lips, those long slender fingers that were the first she knew of him, and kisses them. His inhale is soft and faint, and she swallows, and gently, carefully, releases him from her grasp. His eyes widen, a question in their depths, but she shakes her head, and reaches out, and cups his face in her hands, a hand to each precious cheek, this face she loves, this face more dear to her than any other, for all its imperfections, for all its world of age that she has not yet known, she cups this face, his face, Erik's face, and smooths her thumbs over his skin, faintly rough with wind and time, and leans closer, so close their lips are almost touching, and his eyes slip closed, his head tilted up to her, and lightly, lightly, she brushes her lips over his.

He sighs into her mouth, and that sigh slips down, deep into her heart.

Someday she will bury him in the soft sand of a cliff above the Atlantic. Her mournful song will drift out over the waves until someday she will come to lie beside him. The flowers will grow, the sand will keep them safe, the wind will howl unheard, their music borne in its cries, an echo and a memory, the soft crash of the waves below their own lament, a requiem for two.

Someday. But tonight there are his arms, there is his heartbeat in her ear, and his goodnight smile is gentle in the darkness, her kiss light upon his lips, and they hold each other, and sleep, and dream, never alone, and in her dreams his voice is low and sweet in her ear, mo chuisle, and in his dreams her voice is the faintest whisper, the softest blessing, mo croí.

A/N: Translations of the Irish included in this little fic:

mo croí - my heart; buachalán - ragwort; geansaí - jumper/sweater; tae - tea; agus - and; tá - a whole variety of things namely yes and is; níl - no; an baile mór agus an Gorta Mór - the city and the Great Famine; stormúil agus scamallach - stormy and cloudy; máthair is leanbh - mother and baby (as used regarding the proposed Mother and Child Scheme, 1951); agus an Dochtúir Nollaig de Brún - and Doctor Noël Browne (Nollaig is, coincidentally, Irish for both Noël and Christmas); mo chuisle - throb of my heart.

I won't go into the pronunciations of them all, namely because I intend to record this fic sometime soon - if I ever work up the nerve to!

If you enjoyed this fic please review. It was a bit of an accidental writing but I'm very attached to it.