Chapter Text
Noel wanted bad love.
He wanted a man who would drive him to drink. He wanted to wake up in an alleyway, drowning in a pool of his own vomit. He wanted to drink himself to death on the cup of life.
For now, he’d have to settle on drinking a cup of ever-so-slightly-too-bitter coffee from Blackwood Cafe.
Constance set down a small cup of black coffee and a croissant next to Noel before sitting down on the chair opposite of him.
“So, Noel, how’re you doing? Enjoying the last few days of summer break before junior year starts?”
“As much as I can in this bum-fuck nowhere ass town.” Noel sighed, dipping his croissant into the hot coffee and taking a bite. “Like, this place fucking sucks! There’s like literally nothing to do here. The only slight positive is that I’m not completely freezing my ass off like I do in winter.”
“Oh, sorry, I guess that’s fair to say,” Constance said meekly as she played with her curly brown hair, looking down at the floor with an embarrassed expression. “But it’s not that boring, in my opinion! It’s totally fine if you disagree though!”
The chime of the bell above the door echoes throughout the small café, briefly capturing the two’s attention.
Noel rolls his eyes, “Constance, this town’s biggest holiday is when 7/11 gives out free slurpees on July 11th.”
“That’s not true,” interjects an annoying, screechy voice that Noel could recognize from miles away. “There’s the Fall Fair coming in November.”
Around the corner comes a short ginger girl with a black headband. Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg — the self-proclaimed most successful girl in town, and the not-so-self-proclaimed most annoying girl in town. Noel groaned at the sight of her.
“Speaking of which,” Ocean said as she pulled out two folders from that hideous straight-from-the-2010s brown messenger bag she had slung around her shoulder. “Our sheet music for this year!”
Noel and Constance took the folders from the ginger’s hand, both wearing confused looks on their faces.
“Are you for real? School hasn’t even started yet and Father Marcus expects us to learn this shit already?” Noel complained.
“Firstly, language, Noel Gruber.” Ocean replied, prompting an eye-roll and a coffee sip from the other. “Secondly, it’s because Father Marcus said he wanted us to get a head start since we have a new member joining our choir!”
“Oh wow! A new member? Who is it?” Constance asked, beaming with excitement at the prospect of a new friend in the choir.
The door chime rang again as another customer walked in. Her excitement would, tragically, have to wait for later.
“Oh! Sorry! I’ll be right there.” Constance said before turning back to the pair. “Just tell me about it later! I gotta go soon, lunch rush!”
Noel opened his phone as he took another drink of his coffee to see that it was, in fact, slowly approaching noon. He wasn’t sure why she seemed so frantic — usually the ‘lunch rush’ was no more than six people, all ordering the same exact thing because Blackwood was too broke to have any actual menu variety. No shame in it: times are tough. His thoughts were interrupted by Ocean’s squawking.
Ocean started again, “So yeah! We have a new member coming in. Father Marcus even says that this one has a passion for music!”
The girl grabbed Noel’s shoulders and shook him slightly, causing Noel’s face to slightly wince in discomfort.
“Don’t you see how great this is! I think we might even have a shot at winning Kiwanis this year!” she said with a shit-eating grin on her face.
“You’ve said that for like, the past two years in a row, and did it happen? No.” Noel deadpanned, taking a sip of his drink.
“Don’t be such a Debbie Downer, Noel!”
“Never say that shit again.”
Ocean grabbed Noel’s hands, ignoring his complaints, “This year is gonna be our year! Trust me!”
“Have you even met this mystery member in person?” Noel questioned.
“No…” she admitted with hesitation. “But Father Marcus told me a bit about him! He said his name is Mischa Bachinski.”
“Bachinski? That’s awfully diverse of Father Marcus.”
“It’s cool isn’t it? Apparently he was adopted by the Stones family last summer and only flew in a month ago. Father Marcus said he’s from the Ukraine and—”
“I’m sorry, did you really just say ‘the Ukraine’?” Noel interrupted. “You know that’s like, super offensive, right?”
“What? No way!” Ocean said defensively.
“Yeah way! The only people who still call it that are like, racist middle-aged men who swear up and down that ‘the world’s too sensitive nowadays.’” Noel said, injecting some mockery at the end. “And I thought you were smart.”
Noel smirked as he took the loudest sip of coffee.
Ocean scoffed, “I am smart! I’m on track to being our valedictorian by senior year.”
“Doesn’t seem like it, bitch,” Noel muttered.
“Any-ways, apparently he’s sort of a delinquent too.”
“Oh?” Noel said with a sly grin on his face.
“Noel Alfred Gruber!” Ocean said with a scornful tone.
“Aw c’mon, Oce! Not the full legal government name!” the male said with a hint of mischief in his voice.
“You just called me Oce! You only do that when you’re scheming something! There’s no way you’re already making googly eyes at the new kid!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about! I never said…anything.”
“Oh my God…You know, this is Joseph Campbell all over again.”
“No, this guy seems like big fun. Joseph was boring as fuck.”
“And you still ended up liking him! At this point, you’ve had a crush on every single moderately attractive guy around your age that’s shown you a modicum of attention.”
“Dating pool’s small, what can I say? The heart does what the heart wants.”
“You haven’t even talked to him! What if he’s a total creep and weirdo?”
“Oh? You think the great Father Marcus would ever dare bring a weirdo into choir? Oh, Ocean, your lack of faith in our conductor is deeply saddening,” Noel said mockingly.
“Oh don’t get smart with me!”
“Yeah, you do that enough for the both of us.”
“I do not!”
“You totally do! If you were a man people’d call you a mansplainer — since you’re a girl you get called a bitch.”
“What does that have to do with anything?!” Ocean scoffed as she crossed her arms.
“Whatever.” Noel replied. “So about the new guy?”
“He’s bad, just not in the way that you seem to romanticize so much in that freaky notebook you always write in.”
“Ohmygod, do not bring Monique into this!” Noel hissed. “And how exactly is he not my type?”
“He’s only in the choir because he stole three boxes of communion wine.”
“Damn…was that why they skimped out and gave us, like, stale grape juice last Sunday?”
“Yes! He’s literally on probation for it — a total delinquent.”
“You do realize that’s my exact type right?”
“A petty thief?”
Noel donned a slight smirk on his face as he sipped his coffee. “You know, a guy with that much access to alcohol and that little restraint can only mean one thing.”
Ocean stared at Noel in disappointment.
“A, you disgust me. B, he gave the stolen alcohol to his cousin!” she exclaimed.
“And that’s a problem…how?”
“His cousin’s in fourth grade, Noel!”
“Would’ve been good to know that before!”
“You never let me get there!”
“What-ever.”
Noel took another drink of coffee. He supposes he can overlook this teensy red flag. Everyone makes mistakes, y’know.
“Ok, all that aside, you’re positive this guy is going to be a good addition to the choir?”
Ocean winced a little. “I don’t mean to question Father Marcus’s judgment of musical prowess, but I’m not the most sure.”
“Well, yeah, not sure someone who steals communion wine is gonna be the most compliant in a choir at a Catholic school.”
“That’s exactly what I said! He probably makes like…trashy EDM on Bandlab or something!”
“Damn, not even FL Studio?”
“What the hell is that?”
“Nevermind. But, then again, you’re not exactly the best judge of musical talent either,” Noel sneered.
“And why is that?” Ocean questioned.
“You literally let Ricky Potts into the choir last year and he can’t even talk.”
“It’s 2024, Noel! Accessibility for all.”
“Oh my God, no way I’m letting Miss ‘the Ukraine’ lecture me on political correctness.”
“It was a mistake!”
“So was letting Ricky join choir! You made him play the tambourine you fucking dipshit!”
“It’s a high honor!”
“By whose metric exactly?”
“Mine!” Ocean retorted.
“Whatever.” Noel sighs. “Hear me out on the new guy though.”
“Holy cow, there is absolutely no way you’re still considering this guy at all!” the ginger scoffed. “He literally gave the kid alcohol poisoning! He had to get rushed to the hospital to get his stomach pumped.”
“Dating pool’s small, what can I say?”
“Ok, your dating pool can-not be that bad.”
“You wouldn’t understand half of it.”
“Oh yeah?” Ocean rebutted. “Prove it.”
“I don’t have to prove shit to—” Noel hesitated, before relenting. “Ugh, fine.”
Noel downed the rest of his now-cold-and-even-more-bitter coffee. He actually had this spiel prepared for a long time — he was just waiting for an idiot to bring up a chance to use it, and fortunately for him, he just so happened to be talking to Ocean.
“What’s the population of this town, quickly.” Noel demanded.
“Two-thousand four-hundred and eighty-nine.”
“Of course your ass would have that shit memorized.”
“You asked for it!” Ocean whined. “Not my fault I keep up with the census!”
“Whatever, nerd,” Noel said, rolling his eyes. “Out of that, fifty five percent are like, way too old for me — think of like…people our parents’ age and up. Y’know, the old coots who are too stubborn or too broke to leave this backwater ass town.”
“This assassination of character you’re doing here is completely unrelated to the topic at hand.”
“Fine, whatever. Where was I?”
“Old people?”
“Oh yeah. Aside from them, you have the thirty five percent of people who aren’t, like, ancient enough to be our parents, but are old enough to where dating me would most definitely land them on an episode of ‘How to Catch A Predator.’ You keeping up so far?
Ocean simply nodded with an expression that was…shockingly invested in Noel’s rambling.
“Then there’s around nine percent who are way too young for me. You need me to explain why they’re out of the picture?”
Ocean shook her head.
“Good, that’s better than at least half of the world leaders right now.”
Noel took a bite of his croissant, taking extra care to make sure the flakes stayed on the plate and not the floor.
“This leaves me with a measly twenty-five people within my age range.” he said, still chewing on his food.
“But there’s an issue.”
“Which is?”
“I’m a faggot, Ocean!” Noel said sarcastically, but a little too loudly, eliciting some stares from the five other people in the café.
“Noel! You can’t say that!”
“I’m literally gay.”
“I meant in public! Have some class,” she hissed.
“Whatever. Anyways, as you know, out of those twenty-five people — well, twenty-six now I guess — approximately twelve of them are girls, one of them is me, leaving thirteen suitable bachelors.”
“Aren’t they all straight?”
“A girl can dream.”
“Noel, that sounds like a whole lot more work than it needs to be. Have you ever considered—”
Noel held a hand up to Ocean’s face.
“Oh my God, Ocean, I am not about to have the ‘it’s just a phase’ conversation with you.”
“I’m just saying Father Marcus—”
“You know what, I’ve…had enough of this conversation. I’ll meet the new guy when school starts in a few days,” he said curtly.
Noel grabbed his croissant and moved to leave the café. He felt the beginnings of a headache form in his brain, his lips pressing his lips into a thin line to hold back his frustration. Before he left, he looked back at Constance, who was busy tending to the other customers.
“Thanks for the coffee, Constance!” he said with just a little bit too much volume.
She jumped at the sheer intensity in Noel’s voice before waving back with a concerned look on her face. Constance turned to Ocean and took notice of the pained expression on her face. The girl walked over to the ginger and put a hand on her shoulder.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
“I-I don’t know…I just…”
A long, awkward silence filled the room.
“I need to go say sorry to Noel.” Ocean said frantically.
“I mean, in my opinion, I think you should give him some time and space first. Y’know, he’s probably super mad right now and just wants to be left alone, y’know what I mean?”
There was another silence that lasted a little too long. Constance was the one to break it.
“Sorry, it was just a thought I had—”
“No,” Ocean interjected. “You’re right.”