I'm warning you right now: I'm making Canada a little more cynical and sarcastic than probably normal, and Prussia's going to be more France-like, if you catch my drift. Just thought I'd let you know before you got all confused on why little Mattie's swearing so much (not that he is, really).

Dusk, Eh?
Chapter 1

Papa drove me to the airport that day with the windows rolled down. I, for one, wanted them rolled up and to blast the A/C, but he was adamant about me touching the A/C. It's a little frightening.

"Papa, it's almost thirty-two degrees outside." *

"Oui, and you'd better be happy about it. It's normally not this warm in Canada. Your mother won't believe you if you tell him."

He was right, the average temperature here in January was usually…well, cold. And yes, my mom is a man. That also means that my papa's a man, too (obviously), so they're gay (which is fine by me, whatever floats your boat, to each his own and all that), and no – they didn't get me at some clinic. I was actually born through a surrogate. I don't think I've ever met her, but I'm fine without knowing what she looks like. We're still not one hundred percent sure who my actual father is, but we think it's my dad. I look more like him, anyway—wavy blond hair, blue eyes, pale skin—so it's easy enough to see the resemblance.

Now, in case you were wondering, I live—er, I used to live in the good old city of Vancouver, Canada. My parents, I guess, used to live in Paris, and when they decided they wanted a kid, they looked online for surrogate that wasn't too expensive (but, and I may just be reiterating a nightmare that I had when I was younger, I think they found her on Greg's List*) so they found the one up in Vancouver. Apparently French surrogates charge too much for their…services. Papa was much more than willing to, you know, work with the surrogate, being…eh, never mind. Papa said that Arthur hadn't wanted to move all the way back to France so they packed everything up and moved into their little almost-mansion in Canada.

That being the case, when we vacationed to Massachusetts—not my choice, but I was also, what, two, three? It was actually Arthur's choice, being closest to England we could find (New England, get it? Yeah, it took me a while, too. Damn cheesy joking…)—for the summer, it was really hot and sunny, and…well, let's just say that I got my surrogate mother's skin. See, that being the case, and she being Canadian (probably), I don't tan.

Nope, I burn.

Badly.

So since I never went outside…well, it was Canada. Nobody ever really went outside in Canada, unless they wanted to be pelted by snow, even if it was Vancouver.

Which brings me to another note:

I'm moving—obviously—to the neighbour of good old Canada, in the northern-most state, which is also really snowy. But wait…I'm not talking about Alaska…so maybe it's the second-northern-most state? Sure. Maine. To live with my dad…er, my mom…my not-Papa.

Okay, for any future reference, I'm calling Francis, the parent that I've been living with, Papa, and Arthur dad (unless I just call him by his name). Let's hope that clears anything up.

See, my parents split when I was about five, and Arthur moved down to Maine, because I guess there's a huge French population down there. That's what he told me. I don't get it—he's the one who split up with my dad, so I don't get why he wants a crap ton of French people around. They're all Canadian-French, but it's still French…in a sense.

And it's not like he lives in some big city, like Portland or Lewiston or Augusta, or even somewhere up north, near Canada, like Presque Isle. No, I'm moving to the miniscule town of Mouth, population 3,785. Vancouver had a population of over two million. *

Since my papa's basically the town whore, I won't be able to go unnoticed—he used to live in Mouth when he was younger, before he met my dad…but they actually met there and settled down, moved to France, then came back up to Canada …eh, I'm confused. Anyway, Arthur, on the other hand, is chief of police down in Mouth, so I won't be able to get away with much…er, anything.

Not that I would, I'm just saying.

He is British after all.

It's about a five-hour-and-fifteen-minute flight from my hometown of Vancouver to the "bustling" city of Portland, then another hour or so drive from there to Mouth. Arthur picked me up from the airport, since, even though there's a train that runs through the center of the town of Mouth, it doesn't stop there. It's too small a town for a train station anyway, or so says Arthur. *

Since he doesn't really express many emotions—

"Bleeding Christ, Matthew, you're thin as a twig! Didn't Francis ever fucking feed you? After all, he is a head chef at that restaurant; shouldn't he be feeding his own bloody child?"

Okay, he doesn't express many emotions except anger. I think I could see why it didn't work out between him and Papa. Though maybe it was Papa's flirting with…well, everything. But he can't help that he's French! And when I say 'everything,' I mean everything. He sleeps (slept, actually, until he and Arthur split up) with both men and women, see, and one night, he came home with a lamppost.* I'm not sure how it happened, since he only ever drinks wine and hardly ever enough to even consider himself buzzed, let alone piss drunk—and oh maple, five minutes with Arthur and already I'm using Briticisms.

I tried to ignore him on the hour-long drive up to Mouth, , but it was hard when he was dropping all these F-bombs (or the British equivalent) every thirty seconds, ranting and raving about god only knows. At least I could hold onto the pure-white cat that I've had since I was little who never seems to remember who I am, Kumakiji—or is it Kumatarou? Kumajitou? Kumachigi? I don't really remember. He only ever comes to me to ask for food, and I forgot about putting his name on his food dish, so…maybe that'll be the first thing i do when i get to Arthur's house.

Anyway, the reason I moved here to the perpetually cloudy town of Mouth was because of my papa.* It wasn't that he was doing anything wrong—no, he was just fine, despite coming home with some random woman, sometimes a man and once a lamppost, every night—but he said he wanted to pursue his dream of being a restaurant owner. He was already a head chef, cooking French food that even made me, a full blood Canadian, love his cooking. I didn't want to get in his way—and he kept complaining about how cold it was in Canada, despite Vancouver's beauty and general non-Canadaness—so when I offered one day to move down here to Mouth with Arthur, he approved. Perhaps a little too quickly. And enthusiastically. It was a bit unnerving. So since he wanted to make a living from cooking French food, and we had that house—well, manor was more like it—in France, he moved back to France and I came to live with Arthur in Mouth for a while. I think it was mainly a ploy to get me to get along with Arthur, since we'd never quite hit it off that well in the past. Why did it take me this long to realise that?

Arthur is average height, perhaps a bit short, sandy-haired, kinda spindly (but look who's talking), green eyes, the hugest eyebrows I've ever seen, and foul-mouthed. Like, he drops F-bombs every thirty seconds. He's not at all like my Papa, who's also blond (though more of a golden color), blue-eyed, flirtatious as sin, and hardly swears. I look a bit like papa, I suppose—blond, a really annoying haircurl that just doesn't want to cooperate and sticks in front of my face, blue-violet eyes, glasses that seem to protest against me wearing them by sliding down my nose ever few minutes…. Arthur's English, Papa's French, and I'm Canadian…we're kind of a mixed up family, actually, despite appearances.

We drove back to his house in his police car thing that was given to him by the station. The house is alright, small, double-wide trailer, tan and two bedrooms. Just like I remember it from my stays almost every summer.

It was during our drive to my dad's home that he pretty much dropped the bomb. Not literally (I hope).

"I, uh…I got you a car."

…huh? A car? "Really?"

"Yeah."

Wow. "Thanks."

"Yeah."

And I was genuinely surprised. Not because of the car (no, papa texted me while I was in the car with Arthur about it, before he'd brought it up), but because we managed to have a full conversation without him swearing. Like, at all. It was kinda strange. Sure, it was only a total of ten words (his 'uh' didn't count as a word) between the two of us, but still.

When we got back to Arthur's house, there was the car—actually, it was a truck—in all of its Canadian glory.

No, actually, it wasn't so bad as having the Canadian flag painted on it. It was, like, neon orange.

"Thanks, Arth…er, Dad—mom." I paused, took a deep breath, and tried again. "Thanks." I meant it, too.

He helped me take my bags to my room—which I probably could have done myself, since there were only three—and then promptly left after telling me—angrily—when dinner was…even if it was only a quarter of noon.

That's probably the best thing about him.

He doesn't hover.

I didn't have to worry about looking pleased.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Arthur and everything, but moving to Mouth…it was going to be hard. I didn't have many friends back in Vancouver, so it wasn't like I had to worry about a hard goodbye, but my papa and I were close.

Glancing out the window, I noticed that dark storm clouds began moving their way over the sky.

Joy.

Later that night, I found that, after attempting to eat Arthur's cooking…well, I don't think you can even call it 'cooking,' because it's more like burnt, hazardous waste.

Thank god for having at least one father who can cook and my having lived with him for the first seventeen years of my life. I'd picked up a thing or two from Papa, so I forced Arthur to stop all cooking for the rest of the time that I was living here, and to let me do it. No offense to him or anything, but…he just really shouldn't be cooking.

Ever.

Mouth Academy—kind of a lame name for a high school, especially of this size—was…well, it was actually much smaller than the high school in Vancouver. It looked like there was only one or two, maybe three for a few, teachers per subject in the whole school, which was only two stories itself and the basement. Honestly, I'm surprised the gym and cafeteria were separate, rather than being used for the same thing. It wasn't hard to tell that the school's colours were maroon and white—it was practically all over the school. *

After I'd stopped into the front office, gotten my schedule, and was told where my homeroom was, I was stopped in the hall by a pretty Spanish-looking girl, who introduced herself as Maria—who, by the way, is actually from Venezuela, not Mexico or Spain. Apparently she was in my first period class, calculus, and had lunch with me. So after my morning classes passed by (they were kind of boring; I'd done them already back in Vancouver so it wasn't like I was learning anything new other than Mainer accents are really annoying) and the bell finally rang for lunch, Maria met up with me by my locker with some other guy who looked, like, Cuban or something, Miguel.*

One rather interesting conversation about ice cream with Miguel and four flights of stairs later, we'd arrived at the lunch room. It was kind of small from what I was used to, but my god was it packed. Seriously, for only half of the entire student body, there were a lot of kids. Er, it seemed like it—there were actually only about 120-something students in the lunch room at that point. *

Anyway, it was obvious that Maria knew, like, everyone in the school, which she proved by pointing to everyone with her fork and telling me a bunch of information about whomever it was that she pointed to.

Suddenly, as Maria was explaining Miss Braginskaya's…assets (something I wasn't exactly paying attention to, because they were her private business), I don't know what made me do it, but I turned around to look at where I felt the five pairs of eyes on my back.

It was a group of who I assumed to be students, all—er, most not looking at each other. All five of them shared the same chalky complexion, eyes dark but of different colours.

The two girls were, well… The first girl, staring hungrily at one of the boys, had pale blond hair, stopping around the lower-middle of her back and held back by a white ribbon that was tied into a bow. Her eyes were dark violet but a bit subdued and looked just slightly blue, not as much as mine, though. She wore a dark blue sort of Lolita-style dress, also kind of resembling that of a maid with a white apron tied around her midsection. There was lace around the collar, and the edge of the sleeves possessed white ruffles. But seriously, her staring was freaking me out, even if it was directed at that first boy. The other girl had long, pretty chocolate brown hair that curled a little at the end and forest green eyes. Unlike the first, she held a giddy smile on her face, like she'd just won the lottery or something. She wore a light green, pull-over sweatshirt and black jeans that flared out a bit at the calves. She was staring at the other two boys, not the really tall one, who looked like they were in some sort of argument.

The first boy was…well, he was huge. He was sitting down, and even then I could tell that he was easily over six feet tall, which almost frightened me. He held a childish grin on his face, but it looked forced and nervous—like he didn't actually want to be smiling—and didn't reach his dark violet eyes. His hair was pale blond and almost wavy—I couldn't really tell if it was straight or wavy, honestly. He wore a knee-length tan jacket that looked like it belonged to some Soviet officer and what looked like blue jeans underneath. The second boy had semi-messy, dark brown hair—by semi-messy, I mean most of it was well kept and neat, but there was one flyaway strand that stood up almost on end and curled slightly at the end—and dark topaz eyes. His clothing was refined and proper, definitely standing out in the tiny school of only 230-something students who had probably all known each other practically since birth. He was glaring at the third boy, and his mouth moved every now and then—very subtly, but still kind of obvious in a way, if you were paying attention. The third, I think, was albino. He had messy, silver-white hair that kind of stuck up in random places (was that a…was that a canary nestled in the light-coloured locks?) and deep burgundy-coloured eyes that, although he looked to be arguing with the second boy, they seemed fixed on me. I couldn't really tell what emotions flickered through them, because they came and went so fast—first it looked like interest, then, after he looked back at me from grabbing the brunette's haircurl thing, confusion, then…anger? What was there to be angry at me about? I didn't do anything (I think)!

Anyway, did I mention that all five of them were breathtakingly gorgeous?

Oh, well how about that they all belonged on the cover of some magazine?

No? Well good.

Because they did.

The first girl and the last boy, especially.

Now, don't take that the wrong way. I was raised by two gay fathers (well, one was gay—the other slept with everything), so I'm a very open-minded person…not to mention growing up with my papa's genes, if you know what I mean. Y'know, liking both men and women…yeah, shut up. I appreciate beauty in all forms!

And holy maple, I sound just like papa.

"Who're they?" I asked, motioning to the group. I didn't really want to take my eyes off of the last boy, but since I was practically turned around in my seat and staring at them, I turned my attention to Maria.

"Them?" Maria asked, sounding a bit annoyed and motioning to the table I was just looking at. Maybe I cut her off? Whoops. I'll apologise to her later. I nodded at both my idea and Maria's words. She smiled, seeming like any annoyance was forgotten. "They're the Beilschmidt family."

"That's a German name, eh? They don't look very German," I pointed out, confused.

Miguel gave a kind-of grin, taking a spoonful of ice cream that he'd purchased from the cafeteria up to his mouth. "They're all adopted. I guess Dr Beilschmidt and his significant other person thing—"

"You can say he's gay, you know. I grew up with two gay fathers. It doesn't bug me." I didn't bother put in that my papa slept with men, women, and lampposts.

He gave me an appreciative grin and started over. "Dr Beilschmidt and his husband wanted kids, but since they're gay and don't wanna pay for a surrogate, they figured they'd try to do some kind of good by adopting. The family's freakin' rich, so they had enough money to adopt three kids."

"Three?" I asked, confused. There were five kids over there…

Before Miguel could go on, Maria stopped him by putting a hand on his. Smiling, she turned to me. "Let me explain. Dr Beilschmidt and his husband adopted Gilbert, Roderich, and Elizaveta when they were little. Gilbert and Roderich are cousins, believe it or not, even though Roderich's from Vienna and Gilbert from Berlin. A few years later, a good friend of Dr Beilschmidt died, leaving Nataliya and Ivan. Since their original parents died, Dr Beilschmidt didn't have to pay any adoption fees, since he was put into Ivan and Nataliya's parents' will and became their legal guardian after their death."*

I guess it made sense, but who were each of them? I voiced my thoughts to Miguel (he seemed a little more mentally stable, which seems to be a long story that I'll try to explain some other time), but Maria answered for him.

"Okay, the two platinum blonds—the really tall boy and the really pretty girl—are Ivan and Nataliya Braginski. They're kind of together. The dark-haired boy with the flyaway strand is Roderich Beilschmidt, and he's dating the girl who looks like she wants to explode with happiness, Elizaveta. Interestingly, she doesn't have the same last name as any of the others—hers is Hèdervàry. It's Hungarian or something." I was about to ask who the other one was, since I'd forgotten already, when Maria noticed the confused expression on my face. "And the annoying-looking, albino one? That's Gilbert Beilschmidt. He's the only single one—probably 'cause he's so annoying!" She paused to laugh. "So you know what that means, right?"

I shook my head no, and Miguel cut her off before she could pass out, probably. Seriously, she was starting to scare me.

"Maria, don't." Glancing to me, Miguel grinned and, without taking his eyes from mine, continued. "Let me." He blinked himself out of that creepy trance he was in, and went on. "They're committing legal incest." He paused and thought a moment, then went on. "Well, Ivan and Nataliya are committing actual incest—though most of it's non-consensual. Despite appearances, Nataliya's really scary. And overprotective—"

"That's not what I mean, Miguel," Maria cut in, looking at me. She smiled, which kind of gave me the creeps. "No, I mean that, since Gilbert's easily the hottest boy over there and not in a relationship with anyone, rumour has it that he's about as straight as the lead guy in that trashy vampire romance novel…what's it called again? Headlight? Starlight? Highlight?"

"Twatlight," Miguel answered, grinning widely. Maria saw this and, reaching past me, smacked Miguel on the back of the head.

"Moron."

I didn't really hear any more of their squabbling, because my mind was void of any thoughts other than that of the Beilschmidts. After a few minutes of staring at whatever it was supposed to be (really, if my papa were here, he'd have a serious talk with the lunch staff about how to make edible food) on my lunch tray, Maria spoke up again, her voice a whisper.

"Gilbert Beilschmidt's staring at you."

This got my attention. Without trying to make it too obvious, I turned my head back to their table, not very surprised to find that Gilbert Beilschmidt's eyes were fixed on my back. I stared back at him for a few moments, until Miguel broke me out of my pseudo-trance, telling me that class was about to start. Wondering how I could have missed the bell, I looked over to him to let him know that I'd acknowledged his words and nodded, giving one final glance to the Beilschmidt table.

They were gone.

All five of them had completely vanished from the cafeteria, without so much as a straw wrapper left where they were sitting. All traces of them being in the cafeteria that day were…gone. Almost like they'd never been there in the first place.

I'd only looked away for a second or two.

The door to get back out into the hall was on the other side of the cafeteria from them.

Creeps.

The image of the five of them dressed in skin-tight ninja clothing, fleeing from the lunch room, flashed through my mind, making me blush.

Gilbert looked really good in skin-tight, black spandex, I won't lie.

…

Oh, dear god.

Saying that I was surprised when I walked into my biology class would be an understatement.

And that, as well, would be an understatement.

Looking around the room, I noticed that Miguel also had this class (he kind of ditched me in the hall, something about taking too long at my locker), and that he was sitting in one of the two desks that had only one person sitting at it. I hoped I would be able to sit in the one beside him, because I really didn't want to sit at the other one. I mean—

Ah, damn it.

Almost pushing me over to get to his seat, another male student sat hurriedly in the seat next to Miguel just as the bell rang. You don't even want to know what I was thinking, the curses I'd learned from Arthur (not really thinking I'd ever need them for anything but humouring him anyway) directed to that male student. I didn't exactly know that the seats were, erm, assigned at the time…

The teacher walked into the classroom halfway through my third string of Latin, giving me my textbook and letting me know that I should just follow along whenever I got the hang of things. After that, he told me to take a seat, to which I responded cleverly that there weren't any open seats. I was almost surprised to find that he actually looked up from whatever papers he was shuffling through and swept his gaze over the room, searching for an open seat. A perplexed 'hm' escaped his throat, making me grin with pride. I made him believe me! I mean, this was monumental. I planned on going home, telling Arthur of my accomplishments, and taking a nice, warm bath as reward—

"Yes, Mr Williams. Right next to Mr Beilschmidt."

Now, I'm not one to cuss often, but I couldn't help the hardly-voiced, breathy "fuck" that escaped my lips.

Hurrying to my seat, it looked almost like Gilbert was grinning behind his raised fist that I think was supposed to either hide his up-turned lips or keep him from smelling anything. Did I really smell bad? I'd showered this morning…put on my deodorant…

What was his problem?

And anyway, it wasn't like he said I smelled bad per say. He kind of just sat there, his body rigid, clenching his fist on top of the table. He didn't even try to make it subtle, and his other hand—when he wasn't whipping his phone out and texting about a million words per second—was covering his mouth and nose. It looked hard to breathe.

And then I realised.

At lunch today, Maria gave me a hug at the end.

I probably smelled like her perfume.

Thank god this is the last period of the day.

…

Damn it all to hell.

* "thirty-two degrees" that's 32 degrees Celsius. The Fahrenheit equivelant is, like, 89.6 degrees.
* "Greg's List" I don't own Craig's list, therefore you get Greg's List.
* "Population" I searched these on my dad's phone (blame our lack of Internet) so I hope they're right. I'm not from Canada, so if some Awesome Vancouverite would let me know if that's the right population, that would be great.
* "train" it's true. There's no train station in the real town, but there's a set of train tracks that run straight through the middle of town.
* "lamppost" I've referenced France sleeping with a lamppost so many times…anyway, don't blame him. It was a beautiful lamppost and he appreciates anything beautiful!
* "perpetually-cloudy" the real town Mouth is based after really isn't perpetually cloudy (funny, I'm writing this while it's raining and dreary outside), and usually it's really nice—unless it's during the Wintertime or humid/muggy as fuck.
* "school colours" anything I say regarding the school, such as the colors or the schedule, is true and based off my school. End of story.
* "Maria/Miguel" Maria is Venezuela and Miguel is Cuba. But that should be obvious from the paragraph…orz
* "half students at lunch" There are two lunch periods—Lunch 1 and Lunch 2. They're scheduled for each student and you can't change them, so you're lucky if you get the same lunch as your friends, and only half of the students are halved. Mattie's in Lunch 2 with Maria and Miguel.
* "no adoption fees" Apparently, according to Sora Moto, as long as Dr Beilschmidt was in Ivan and Nataliya's parents' will to become their parents after they died, he wouldn't have had to pay any adoption fees. So thank you so much for clearing up my confusion!

And so marks the first chapter in my Twilight parody! I hope you liked it~

Reviews make me happy!