It's the greatest cosmic irony imaginable. Just as Dan's finally come to terms with his life - his new life, the life he had never dared contemplate living - just as he's finally managed to wrap his brain around the concept of living, period - the world is coming to an end.
If he were an arrogant man (which he isn't; he's the opposite of arrogant, the kind of man whom old ladies refer to as that nice young man and smile at approvingly - well, except for certain old ladies, bigoted old bats that they are, but Dan, being a nice young man, isn't mentioning any names) he might think that the world had decided to end right then just to spite him.
It's not as though the universe was in the habit of cutting him breaks, anyway. He's used to being kicked around. Figuratively and literally: he was a small kid growing up, his growth spurt didn't hit its stride until a few months past his fifteenth birthday, and you know what happens to small, skinny kids on the tough streets of Vancouver. Or anywhere.
His mum used to scold him for the way he'd skulk around furtively, depressed, hiding behind the dark blue Chesterfield and peering around it instead of coming out to talk with whichever neighbors were visiting her. "Lose the hangdog expression," she'd say, and Dan had always wondered what that really meant, if it had something to do with dogs or if it had something to do with hanging. (He couldn't imagine it could possibly be related to both at the same time. Who'd want to hang a dog?)
The morning he got married, she told him to cheer up. "It's your wedding, not your funeral, for God's sake!" It was all the same to him, though he didn't dare say that out loud. Val was his best friend, and she wanted to get married, so they did. What Dan wanted didn't enter into the equation. It never did, never has. Over the years, the universe has proven itself supremely unconcerned with what Dan Jarvis wants.
Except once. And that once is sitting beside him at Iggy's, passing him the salt for his scrambled eggs on toast, leaning towards him casually, almost imperceptibly, but Dan can feel the heat from the body next to him, and it warms more than just his skin. Maybe someone who doesn't know them wouldn't be able to tell that he and Duck MacDonald are lovers, but this is Iggy's, this is Wilby Island, and there isn't anybody in the place who doesn't know them.
When I thought of "Duck and Dan at the end of the world," the first paragraph came to me whole. Because it's such a cool and ironic idea, isn't it? Dan gives up the idea of suicide...and the world comes to an end.
This whole first section was written longhand in a tiny notebook while I was backpacking in the wilderness. Most of it is pretty much the way I originally wrote it down, although the first draft was past tense and I switched it to present while in the middle of writing it. And just for fun, here's a page:
I had a Canadian housemate once who always called the couch a Chesterfield. I've been dying to use it in a Canadian fandom story ever since.
The news was on television last night, and it seems like everybody on the whole island is here, crowded into the small lunchroom, arguing and praying and crying. Maybe there's a universal force that makes people want to gather together when something catastrophic happens. Banding together, circling the wagons against the common threat. And he's part of it. It's kind of nice, being included in the general conversation, being treated like an islander. Finally.
Not that all of them approve of their relationship - not that it's any of anyone's business, Sandra says to them as she tops off their coffee, says it just loudly enough to be overheard by the tight-lipped biddies who turn their chairs away every time Duck and Dan walk into Iggy's together. But at the moment, the imminent end of the world is of far greater concern than who is sleeping with whom - even to the tight-lipped biddies of Wilby.
Sandra
"Still open?" says Irene as she walks in. Amazing how she can convey so much disdain with just two words. She's saying, I guess you don't have anything better to do with what's left of your life. She's saying, if you had someone special you'd be spending your last weeks with them, not serving me coffee.
Then again, Irene's spending a few moments of her last weeks in Iggy's, so.
"People have to eat," Sandra says with a smile. She can be gracious to Irene, who is treating the end of the world like a personal affront. She's happy to be here, home in Wilby, for the end.
So I thought about it a while, and thought: hmm, what if I do a little bit from a bunch of different characters? And that appealed to me, because Wilby Wonderful is such an ensemble movie - and so are the best Wilby stories.
I started with Buddy, but that didn't work, and I realized, oh! it's because I mentioned Sandra at the end of Dan's section, so it has to go to her next. Then Buddy, then Duck, which will bring it back to Dan in a nice circle.
If there's anything she regrets, it's that Emily won't have a future. She won't go off to university, have a career. She won't fall in love, get married, have children. She won't see the world - and that would have been the one thing that would have gotten Sandra out of Wilby, the prospect of showing Emily the world. But most of Europe was destroyed by the meteor that set the Earth on its spiral toward the sun, and the same orbital changes that are gradually lengthening the day in Wilby are plunging the southern hemisphere into bitter cold and darkness, so there doesn't seem much point in travel. Anyway, Emily's seen a lot of Canada and even some of the U.S., when Sandra was drifting purposelessly from one city to another.
What she hadn't had, until Sandra moved them back to Wilby, was a home, a real home. A community. Wilby has always been a tight-knit place, where everybody knows everybody else's business. Once that was enough to drive Sandra away, and she'd happily lost herself in the impersonal noise of cities. But now there's nowhere else she'd rather be, and she's grateful to be able to give Emily this, at least.
Besides, the cities are horrible places right now. The television shows rioting nightly in Toronto and New York, even in Halifax, even in Kingston, where she waited tables for fourteen months and had an affair with a married professor at Queen's University. Everywhere else, things are falling apart, but here they seem to be coming together. Wilby's taking care of its own. People here seem to have become more thoughtful, kinder, more generous and giving in these last weeks. Nobody's charging money for anything unless they have to, and when they do - when they need the money to pay their suppliers on the mainland, who've all raised their prices, of course - everyone kicks in to help.
The door swings open, and it's Buddy, coming in for his daily cup of coffee. She's glad, now, that they broke things off before they went too far. Maybe she has a tiny twinge of regret now and again, but it's a soft-focus kind of regret, like looking at sailboats on the horizon and wishing one of them was hers. Buddy and Carol went through tough times, and maybe some of it was because of her, but they seem to have come out of it stronger and happier, and they're facing the end hand in hand.
And maybe it would be nice to have a husband or a lover right now, but she'd rather be alone than be with someone she doesn't love utterly, who doesn't love her. Anyway, she has someone - she has Emily. That's enough for both of them.
Buddy
He still makes his rounds these days, but it's mostly just for show. He's acutely aware that he's a visible symbol of the community as a community, as something more than just a bunch of people who happen to live on the same island. That's where he has it easy compared to the cops in the big cities, who are fighting gangs, fires, looting, crazy sprees of burglary and murder by people who no longer care about anything; he hasn't even written a parking ticket since the news broke. He walks around town and talks to people, drives the patrol cruiser through the streets, just to be there. But there isn't much to do, as the end approaches in Wilby.
When the news came out, when the scientists were sure and they announced it on all the networks, the first thought Buddy had was I guess I don't need to bother quitting smoking, after all. But Carol went to pieces. "There's no point in any of this now, can't you see?" she had sobbed into his shoulder. "My career is completely useless! My whole life is completely useless!"
Privately, he'd always thought that about her work: she raced around frantically all the time, calling people and arranging house showings and filing paperwork, but it seemed to him that buying someone else's house shouldn't be any more complicated than buying someone else's dining room table, or lawnmower, or outboard engine. "Your career is not your life," he'd said gently, but she locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out. She ignored his knocks, his notes, his quiet pleas, and eventually, heart heavy, he had to let her be.
For days she avoided him. She was a weeping shadow, moving through the house like a ghost, and when he tried to talk to her she fled. She came to bed after he'd fallen asleep, and rose early and left the house before he woke.
As soon as I hit on the idea of doing vignettes from various POVs, I knew I wanted to do Carol's reaction from Buddy's POV. At first I thought this was cheating, a little; then I realized that really, all the sections are about people and who they love, not just about themselves alone. Which ties in to the theme, again.
And it was obvious to me what Carol's initial reaction would have to be.
Mrs. O'Leary offered that she'd seen her down at the Watch, so finally Buddy drove down there, went out to the rocks where Carol was standing like a long-ago ship captain's wife, staring out at the dark water, waiting for her lover to return.
He came up behind her, put an arm around her shoulders. "Your career is not your life."
"It's been my life for so long," she said, looking out at the mist that formed over the waves. "I don't have anything else."
It hurt him to think that it had come to that, but he knew he was just as much at fault. She'd slid one way and instead of going after her, he'd slid the other. After Dan had tried to hang himself, they'd started back toward the center, toward each other, but these things took time, and the distance between them still seemed so vast.
But time was running out, and if the gap was to be bridged, they'd both have to do it. "You have me."
She was silent for a long moment. Then she slid her arm around his waist and looked directly at him for the first time in nearly a week. "We have each other."
They went home and they made love. Since then, Carol's been more her old self - not the Carol that she was in the past few years, obsessed with her career, but the Carol that she was when Buddy first met her, first fell in love with her. And maybe Buddy's been more like he was in those early days, too; he doesn't have eyes for anyone but her.
Duck came over one day to fix their clothes dryer, and before he got to work she drew him aside for a few minutes of quiet talk, heads bent together, voices low. (Buddy was surprised to see him, saying that it seemed pointless to fix things at this stage. Duck had just shrugged and said as how he thought that things ought to work right whether the world was ending or not.) Buddy's not sure what she said to him and wouldn't presume to ask. But he thinks she's making her peace with people, before the world ends. She's making her peace with Wilby.
She's made her peace with him. Before the end, he thinks, maybe she'll make peace with herself.
Duck
Strange to think it's their last time. Everybody's last time. He slides a hand slowly up Dan's arm, curls his fingers around Dan's shoulder and pulls him close for a kiss. What everyone wants, he thinks. Love. And some of us are lucky enough to get it.
Dan sighs a little into his mouth and wriggles up against him. It's been hard to get used to having another person in his bed again; since he's been back in Wilby it had been all quick fucks at the Watch until he met Dan and decided that quick fucks weren't what he wanted. He wanted someone to sit on the sofa and watch television with, someone to eat dinner with and argue about who ought to win the Stanley Cup, someone to lie against full-length in bed and wake up with in the morning.
I knew I wanted to end with a somewhat soft-focus sex scene, because, um, I like writing sex.
Just before I started this section I went for a run, and Something's Coming was one of the songs on my iThingy, and the lyrics jumped right out at me as a perfect title for this story. It's a bit of a pun, really: the literal sense is intended to evoke the feeling of community that the people of Wilby have, but the colloquial usage of being "called home" as a euphemism for dying struck me as a wonderful (if slightly ghoulish) pun.
Their kiss is long and leisurely; it's all territory they've explored before. There's a certain excitement in having a new lover, a different body to touch and learn, but Duck's had enough of them to know that underneath, they're all bodies. Arms, legs, dicks. What makes them different is the person inside, and discovering who that person is, yeah, that's great, but knowing that person - that's even better.
He guesses that's his only regret, that he and Dan will never get the chance to have known each other for ten years, twenty. They won't even get a full year together. But that's okay. They have now.
Now Duck slides his lips down the edge of Dan's sharp jaw, tasting stubble and soap and skin; now Dan's hands are on him, urging him down his chest; now he's licking at Dan's groin; now he takes him into his mouth; now Dan is moaning, shuddering, coming.
Dan closes his eyes for a moment and then he's licking his own taste from Duck's tongue, his arms wrapped around Duck as though he's Dan's only anchor in the world, the only thing keeping him from floating off into space. "Yeah," he whispers, his fingers tightening on Duck's hips. "Yeah."
Dan's hand moves down, around. He kisses Duck again and then drops his head to Duck's lap, stroking, licking, kissing, slow and sweet the way Duck likes it. Dan's gotten over being nervous about what he does to Duck: "It's all good," Duck had told him, and eventually Dan came to believe it.
And it is good, it's good now, and Duck breathes hard, harsh rhythm building and finally breaking as he lets himself go into Dan's hands and mouth. One last time.
And, um. I like writing sex. And I like writing Duck and Dan having sex. (And if you've read more than one or two of my stories, you know that stubble is my particular kink.)
And look, we've looped around to Dan again, closing the circle of the story.
They lie there in a tangle for a while, Duck isn't sure for how long. Finally he glances at the clock; less than an hour to go. Eventually he says, "Ready to go?"
Dan nods, and they get up, get dressed, get in the truck. The parking lot at the Watch is full to overflowing. Pretty much everybody in Wilby's come to see the world out together.
They nod at Sandra and Emily, and at Buddy and Carol, and at Deena, and Stan, and even at Irene, who grudgingly gives them a quick bob of the head. Everybody's silent; there isn't even any birdsong. The only noise is the lapping of the waves on the rocks, the same lapping that greeted the first settlers on the island. It'll end with them.
Dan slips his hand into Duck's, and they tilt their heads up to the swollen sun, and wait for the end.
In my original idea - the all-Dan's-POV one - the sex scene would be the end. But as the story evolved to being about all of the characters, and about the sense of togetherness and community in Wilby, I realized everyone needed to be here for the end.
The Watch is the obvious place for everyone to gather, and it echoes the gathering at Iggy's at the beginning of the story. Mentioning the first settlers makes it even more circular and in a way gathers all of Wilby's history together, the ultimate sense of community and love.