Fic: The Last Noel

[foolish_m0rtal]

Title: The Last Noel
Genre: End of the World, Romance
Rating: PG
Summary: The world will be ending soon, and Victor still hasn't spoken to the man who comes into his cafe every day.

Notes: I say it is no coincidence that Christmas fell on a Sunday, so this piece was written for sundaysnuggles as a gift to all my friends. Written in anticipation of watching Melancholia at the Berkeley theatre on Christmas. For inquiring minds, this story isn't supposed to take place in any particular place in Europe.

They looked up and saw a star shining in the east, beyond them far;
And to the earth it gave great light, and so it continued both day and night.

It is morning in Victor Noel's café, and a man has just settled beside the window with his newspaper. He comes in every day at precisely 7:45. Sometimes he reads scientific journals and other times he lingers to do the crossword. Victor wonders who he is.

The radio station switches to a news bulletin about the discovery of a new outer space phenomena, and the man looks up from his paper, so Victor leaves it on.

Victor is not fascinated with him because he is handsome—and god, he is. He has straight dark eyebrows and a sharp gaze, and Victor has never seen him smile—but the man is a mystery. He puts out his cup whenever Victor offers to refill it, and he nods to say thank you and tips generously, but he has never uttered a word.

It is 4 A.M, and Victor is in the café kitchen with his sleeves rolled up and his hands immersed in dough. The news station is announcing spurious claims that the recent phenomena will cause a catastrophic global event. The two lead scientists on the project have been dismissed, which is unfortunate because one of them, Dr. Aram Koelling, was a candidate for the prestigious Honneurs de la Physique this year.

Victor switches to another station, and the radio knob is floury where he has touched it.

Someone knocks on the café doors, and he ignores it till he sees the mystery man's face through the window. The man begins babbling when Victor lets him in. "I have to write it down," the man says. He sounds German. "I have to write it all down because there won't be any of us left. No one will know we were here."

Victor tries to calm him and leads him to his usual seat by the window. When he returns with a cup of espresso, the man is already gone.

The man does not come into the café the next day or the day after that. Or the day after that. By that time, news has already broken out, and the whole world is in chaos.

It is the weekend, and Victor stops to check on his shop. Other cities have been plagued by looters and gangs, but Szarsevitch is a quiet aging town that has decided to die with grace. The locks on the doors are all intact, and the front-facing bay windows are unbroken. However, under the Noel Café logo, someone has written "L'amour est le miracle de la civilisation" in bright neat graffiti.

He lets it remain on the glass.

It is midnight, and Victor is serving coffee to the customers. The streets are as bright as day, and the sky is a glowing livid red. It is unnerving, but Victor refuses to draw the blinds.

His breath catches as his mysterious man enters the café and sits next to the window. He murmurs, "Thank you," but nothing else when Victor brings him a coffee.

The coffee is bitter and the pastries are almost stale, but the customers don't care because Noel's is the only café that is still open. Victor's deliveries have stopped coming, and he isn't sure how long his supplies will last. He thinks with some grim humour that the supply of pastries may last longer than the number of humans alive to eat them. Some of the evacuees have called Victor brave and strong, but he is neither of these. He is cowardly and weak, unwilling to leave the things he holds dear. Or perhaps he just knows there is no safe place on Earth to run.

The man finishes his coffee and rises to fold up his newspaper. It is an old newspaper from when the world was mundane and blissfully self-absorbed. The man leaves, and the bell above the door dings.

He is halfway down the street when Victor throws his apron aside and runs out the door. "Wait!" he shouts. "Please wait!"

The man stops and turns. He looks surprised, and it is a strangely vulnerable expression on his face.

"I'm sorry," Victor says in a rush. "But I thought since the world is about to end, I would tell you that I love you."

The man's eyes widen."Oh," he whispers.

Victor bites back the urge to apologise, because he won't. There is no time for apologies anymore.

"I'm Aram Koelling," the man says.

"I know," Victor replies, because he should have known. "I'm Victor Noel."

Aram smiles, a shy genuine smile. "Yes, I know."

And Victor is embarrassed, because yes, of course he would know. "Come home with me, Aram," he says, because there is no time for shame anymore either.

And Aram is nodding and saying, "Yes, yes, I would like that," and he takes Victor's hand.

Together, they walk through what is left of Szarsevitch, and they cast long dark shadows behind them that stretch out like the telephone poles where the birds have stopped nesting.

It is the end of the world, and Victor is lying in bed. Aram is wrapped all around him, tucking his face into the crook of Victor's neck and running fingers through his hair, as if Victor is the only safe thing in the entire world.

They had come back to Victor's flat and talked for hours and hours and finished a bottle of wine between them, and then Victor had put aside Aram's flute of wine and kissed him, and Aram had pulled him close.

Their unfinished glasses are rattling on the bedstand, and one of the pictures on the wall has already fallen and cracked its frame. Several car alarms are going off outside, but there is no one to turn them off. It has begun to snow.

Aram kisses Victor's ear. "Go back to sleep," he murmurs, and Victor does.




French translation: L'amour est le miracle de la civilisation: "Love is the miracle of civilization."