In Pursuit of Happiness: Chapter 7- A Cupid's Arrow
Title: In Pursuit of Happiness: Chapter Seven- A Cupid’s Arrow
Author: Mia
Rating: An R on the rocks, with a dash of NC-17 and a decorative umbrella if you’re so inclined ;)
Pairing: None other than Jack and Ennis.
Summary: This is going to be a dark story about possession, love and abuse in the high school setting.
Warnings: Sexual metaphors/prose and some sadness; mention of minor character death.
Disclaimer: Jack and Ennis are the fabulous creation of Annie Proulx. They don’t belong to me and I’m writing purely for fun, no money involved.
Feedback: This is my first multi-chapter fic, and it would be lovely to know how you think I’m doing. Previous chapters can be found on my LJ.
Chapter Seven is a significant part of Ennis’ journey and so there are some painful memories detailed- but it is a chapter about love, and if you’d like to know whether there’s a kiss involved, I hope you’ll read on and find out…;)
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep/ But I have promises to keep/ And miles to go before I sleep…”
Robert Frost
Chapter 7- A Cupid’s Arrow.
Ennis knew about love: he had seen it in shades of crimson, damasked and cold; longed for it in rainbow arches of neon; caught it in his hands and felt it slip away in blue ripples across the river of time. Love meant never having to say you were sorry, so the saying went, but all of Ennis’ loves had sung to that final melody eventually- for his brother, there had been I’m sorry it was you, and for his parents, after long months of slow-dawning realisation spread in one violent scarlet crush across his heart, temporarily eclipsing his grief, there had been I’m sorry I’m not him.
He remembered uttering that first declaration of love, that first apology, as clearly as if it were a matter of minutes rather than years since it had happened, tombstones in slots of 365 days etched in his mind as each one came to pass. Late at night- or sometimes even later, whilst he slept- Ennis would replay it, all the key components rising out of the mists and walking back to him down the valleys of memory: the high July sun, almost sarcastic in its brightness; the malicious peal of the telephone from down the hallway, seeping out around the closed front door like poison; and then the blunt crash of the brakes, high whining sound like the feedback on a radio tuned to a station that didn’t exist when the car tyres skidded, unravelling from their steel centre on impact. When he had stepped outside, the coils of rubber unpeeling lethargically onto the grass, listless after the expenditure of energy it had taken to hurt what Ennis loved, had looked like snakes, their glittering ebony eyes snuffed out to see no evil.
The man who had driven the car (Ennis felt nothing towards him in that moment, no hatred or malice; he might have been a counter on a board game for all that he meant in those first few horrific seconds) was standing at its side, knuckles pressed to his mouth as if to silence a slipstream of words that Ennis heard all too clearly: oh my god, oh my fucking god please no, but what good did that do; where was the use in praying now? There was blood running down the man’s face from a small slashed cut to his forehead; probably from the force of the air bag, probably nothing much, a stitch or two and then a scar, really just fucking nothing and so why was he crying, son of a bitch; what was his goddamn loss? The blood trailed desolately down the man’s face- and even now, he was still just The Man; Ennis had never let himself remember his name past the date of the inquest, frightened of what he might do with the dark knowledge if it was ever thrust into permanence within his hands- all the way to his chin, curving around the hollow of one eye before it descended, so he seemed to be crying blood, and Ennis had felt as though he were caught in between ice-thin wheels of celluloid, the black- and- white strips of a horror movie.
His brother had been pale; an arm, a leg bent at the wrong angles, and didn’t they always say oh, he just looked like he was sleeping, but he truly did except for the stark gush of blood laid out like a red carpet beneath him, his eyes peacefully closed, and it was only when Ennis, faced with the endless wait for the ambulance, had delicately drawn back one creamy white lid that he had seen the pupils fixed in a blank stare, scarcely responding to the pinprick of sunlight. He was still breathing, pulse fluttering weakly at the jugular or maybe it was another vein, the carotid; Ennis didn’t know, couldn’t bring himself to care so long as that precious butterfly’s wings kept beating, so he held one limp hand tight in his own, as though he could squeeze his own life into it. That was what he had wanted, to drain out the slow creep of death, drown it with vitality, with blood, synthesise cells with stardust until he was erased and his brother was shocked back, alive with the electric adrenaline in Ennis’ body. It was then that he had leaned down and whispered it into the unspoiled shell of an ear, not touched by spilled blood or stroked with mortality’s hand, so softly:
“I love you; I’m sorry it was you.”
Love meant having to say you were sorry.
*
Sometimes, though, since Jack- always and only since Jack- Ennis wondered if maybe he had gotten it mixed up, if perhaps the rules might bend or stretch, elastic with hope and spun from truth, every once in a while. Love for Jack had blindsided him from the ether, come in slow waves of wanting that lapped at the edges of his mind: at first just a staunch protectiveness, then the warm buzz of friendship, and now the beginning of a bloom into something else alongside that; something that made him wake up every few nights, like this one, with the moon spilling a glittering pool of light onto the empty pillow beside him and a question mark of surprise flickering low in his stomach- yet surprise, he thought, was not quite the right word for it. If Ennis let himself be honest, it was disappointment that haunted the long hours between midnight and dawn, disappointment that where his encircling arms expected to find Jack- curled naked and soft beside him with eyes that glowed silver, laced through with sleep and something else, too: the low smoulder of desire- there was only the open space between what he wanted and what there was; a bed that was empty on one side and Ennis’ slow exhalation of held breath drifting like smoke up to the ceiling, the substitution for a shared cigarette in his dream’s afterglow.
Ennis felt as though he had peeled away the fruits of a lust lotus flower, and found himself at the door of the tender green bud that had lain in wait over the years, watching for the watershed, searching for the right mix of hormones- sparked now between him and Jack like light, bright stars- to send the feathery white petals, dipped at their apex with dusky pink, fluttering down to break the surface of the silent waters beneath, arched emerald and voluptuous as teardrops. Now, though, as the petals meandered slowly out of sight, he was left wondering whether the mint bud would forever remain sealed to him, or if it was just a matter of time before the flesh would yield to him and stream open, send sweet nectar flooding like honey to quench a mutual thirst, sugared with acceptance and bitten through with the clarity of what it was to know the very heart of Jack, for Ennis to bear all his secrets as if they were his own.
He had seen those blue eyes sometimes, opened out like a summer sky before him and flushed with gilt-edged trust, and had listened to words from those rosebud lips that were meant only for him to hear, but still he knew there were parts of Jack’s mind that flashed and sparkled with mystery; events left unmentioned, a lost father still unexplained, and no matter how he longed to hear it, he didn’t want to push too hard for the knowledge to be granted unwillingly. One of his favourite things about Jack was that every laugh, every touch, every concerned look when Ennis was feeling low, had been earned slowly, by simple things: being kind, being there when it mattered and even when it didn’t, when all they did for the day was spin out their reams of conversation on glittery feeds of friendship. He had walked into enough cheap companionship to understand that what was forged on false elements would fall apart sooner or later; but he and Jack were built with the balmy consistency of solidarity, and that was how Ennis felt around him- safe, steady, his steps measured by a balance that came with knowing Jack would be willing to fall with him were he ever to lose it.
Lying down, his hands a safe pillow for the whirling weight of his mind, Ennis knew that all it really came down to when the taste of the last girl’s lipstick- synthetic cherries and cold crème- faded from his mouth, was who he wanted to turn and see beside him every morning: the flowing curves of a woman, with a heart-shaped face and hips that held a warm cradle of fertility nestled between them, or a man- Jack, of course- with all of that lean sweet strength, broad shoulders set by the natural wiry cuts of muscle in his back. The answer was one Ennis did not have to stop and ponder, for he had recognised its presence within himself for years, bedded down amongst the neat All-American façade that he had carefully preserved like one blue moon in a row of white; it was his truth and yet his lie, a secret that not even Jack knew. Girls had been curious to him, exotic with all of their lace and sweeping intellect; scent and smoky eyes every day that reminded him of the women he liked to draw: diaphanous angelic creatures with hair that sent rays of sunlight ricocheting in a spectacular waterfall of gold every which way. There had been an art class he’d gone to outside school, and on their first day of Life Drawing, as Ennis had somehow sensed would be the case, he had found himself sitting not four metres from one of the loveliest women he had ever laid eyes on, her eyes set like liquid amber and the rest of her frame just as fluid, skin the colour of cocoa; the heat in the room had risen almost unbearably from his male counterparts, and yet Ennis had felt nothing, no flickering candle of heat in his stomach, as though someone had flicked a switch to OFF and left it there, just out of his clamouring reach. It was then that he had truly known.
Jack was his first real crush, marking the first time Ennis had looked at another man and experienced the multitude of symptoms that had eluded him throughout his months spent dating women; all shaking hands and a stomach that bloomed with the powdery wings of butterflies, shaded in every colour from purple pleasure to yellow yearning and back again. He liked the way Jack had one tooth that sat slightly crooked, giving his grin a wolfish edge that was always guaranteed to make Ennis’ own smile come out to play, shy as a child, and sometimes when Jack was tired but found something funny, his laugh would go husky as if infused with dusty smoke, burning deep in his lungs but even more fiercely in Ennis’ chest, where the swell of emotion would be unstoppable, thick enough to taste its salty tang on his tongue. There were so many things, little tics that belonged to Jack and made his heart sing every time he saw them: the way he always sat on Ennis’ left side and touched their knees together, with a little tap as if to say Here I am, his perpetual habit of painting himself with pens all day long so that when they met at the end of the day, Jack would be tattooed with swarms of stars, flowers, once even a tiny Indian elephant with its trunk raised up triumphantly; anything at all might be there adorning Jack’s wrists, and he would look forward to seeing it, guess whether it would be animals or planets, great solar systems of weaving black ink, spliced with flashes of neon colour so that the elephant was throwing a sapphire blue wink, and the stars could be supernovas, fizzing purple and orange like a vitamin tablet in water.
Tired now, his mind finally beginning to slow with the clock ticking just past three, Ennis turned onto his stomach, closed his eyes. Let misty fronds of the last dream rise up from the heat of the fevered sheets he lay on, the sweet tenor of Jack’s moans, illusory and soft, lulling him back to sleep.
*
Friday came once more, pink as newborn skin, and Jack sat up at the top of the bleachers, unseen by anyone on the field in front of him except Ennis. He kept his eyes turned away from the small alcove where they had first met, with its rusty steel bench and walls dashed through with the jagged edges of pebbles; a flash of his own blood, blackened now that the weeks had passed, still caught your eye if you happened to walk past it at just the right angle, like a circle that might never be scrubbed clean no matter how hard he tried. Yet from this height, the distant calls of the boys beneath sounded unreal, thrown into vague reflection that barely seemed as if it could exist so high up, where the air was thin enough to fill him with blissful euphoria, take away the blunt hit of oxygen from his lungs and merge it with something else drowsy and soft. Jack felt as though he might be able to reach out and touch the sun-warmed grit and dozing clover of the mountains opposite, flooded with streaming chasms of light, tempering their rough edges with a lavender aura that looked as though it had been filtered through water and dosed with mist. He loved fall.
Something caught his eye, and Jack looked down to see Ennis holding a hand up, to show him it would be five minutes until the end of his football practice. His face was apologetic for making his friend wait; why he thought it was a problem Jack would never know, because his heart skipped a beat every time it alit on Ennis’ form, dressed in the same grey sweats as every other person on the pitch, but standing out as if he were ringed with a beacon of light. Randall, standing sullenly in the corner with his gaze cast down to the frozen tufts of grass beneath his feet, caught the gesture and raised a mocking hand to Jack, smile flashing with the sharp teeth of a serpent, and Jack felt the plateau of comfortable peace that had lined his stomach like sugar just a few moments before become bitter lemon, the acidic taste of fear pressing into his throat with all the impact of a punch. In his mind, he saw the plastic red handles of little children’s scissors, slicing through skin as thin as paper to meet its colour match beneath, wreathed in blood.
He’s always gonna get you somehow, Jack.
The quiet shattered, spread shards that were sharp enough to tear into the soft flesh of his safety, and left it for dead on the side of a long road to nowhere.
*
Looking into the dark tar of Randall’s eyes was like standing at the opening of a grate and seeing down between the bars, frosted with tears, to the dark vortex beneath where Jack sat curled and broken, dirt marring the tender skin beneath his nails with his frantic efforts to crawl out, but Ennis looked into them anyway, his stare steady and unflinching. The last rose of his resolve withered and died, leaving only the thorns, no longer obscured by prettied-up petals, a skeletal façade in the face of this new outrage; the look of hunted sorrow on Jack’s face, so darkly contrasted with the serene smile that had flickered there before like a shooting star, was burned into his mind so quickly that he felt he might scream with it. The shrill call of Coach’s final whistle seemed like a cry for battle and he flew down the pitch in pursuit of the ball to collect it, with hands that longed so fiercely to curl into fists they ached; Randall cut across him and dodged the ball out of his path, and oh what sweet triumph it was to see that, exactly what he had thought would happen folding out like a map of revenge, inked with sparkling yellow fury.
A sheaf of ice spread thick as molasses on the turf ahead of them sent Randall down to the floor, panting for crushed breath, and Ennis was on him in a second, casting a glance back to see that they were the subject of no one’s interest right now, though they might well be soon. He thought he had maybe sixty seconds to press his point, and he intended to make them the longest that the boy beneath him had ever experienced, even though Ennis was not going to speak with his fists, ripe as the temptation was. Being around Jack had only proved what he had already generalised for himself: the path that ended with a punch gave prizes to no man, but pain for each.
“Get the hell off, Ennis!” Randall hissed, struggling mightily as Ennis hauled him to his feet, kept one hand knotted tight as wire on his shirt, “You knew I would slip, you fucker!”
“You listen to me,” Ennis began, and something in his tone must have said all the words for him because the writhing muscles under his hand steadied, going as still as the surface of a lake in as long as it took to skim a stone across it, creating flowing waves of ripples foamed with lacy aqua as far as the eye could see and then nothing else, but the stone would roll unknown, land on the river floor, sending up a plume of silted dirt to remain there forever; water never moving quite the same way again. “And you better listen good ‘cause I’m gonna say this to you one time, and I ain’t fooling. Time’s up, and I’m not taking another minute of your shit; you better get back in line and get there fast or I’ll get you there myself, hear me? You leave him the fuck alone. He’s got nothin’ to do with you, none of your concern, don’t need to hear your opinion on a single thing in my life and Jack’s one of them.”
“My arm hurts, I need to-” Randall whined, an obvious falsity since Ennis had been careful to restrain him as little as possible, but in this shaded space of vengeance, anything was fresh ammunition.
“Oh really, huh? You think that’s pain, you son-of-a-bitch? Well, I tell you what, how ‘bout you and Jack switch round for a day, see how good you feel with your whole fucking body busted half the time and then, then you can have the front to tell me you think you’re hurting, okay? How much d’you think he hurts Randall; how much damage d’you think you’re doing? C’mon! Why’n’t you be a man for once and face up to what you do, admit what you are?”
The misery face was replaced suddenly with contorted venom, words rolling out from above a sour atmosphere that snuffed out each star with the ivory fingers of ghosts, slick as silk.
“Yeah, and what am I? Least I’m not some white-trash queer without two dimes to rub together!”
“You don’t fool me,” Ennis growled, “I know what your problem is, could write you out like the palm of my hand. He’s all the things you’re never gonna be, right? Except it’s not quite like you try to make out, it’s not that he’s poor and you’re not; it’s a whole lot more complex than that, isn’t it? ‘Cause he’s smart, and you’re not. And he made something of himself, got himself into one of the best schools around off his own back, instead of relying on Mom and Dad’s bucks to do all the work for him. Jack’s gonna sail into Harvard at the end of this year if he wants to and what’re you gonna do, scare the teachers into marking your Report Card good, steal your resume off the internet ‘cause you know you sure as hell don’t have a hope of getting in there based on all that non-existent intellect? One day you’re going to be in an office doing the daily grind like anyone else on earth, and you’re gonna look up and see a real fuckin’ familiar face sitting at the head of the table earning the kind of money you’ve only dreamt about, and it’s gonna be him, or someone like him! The Jacks in this world have got you by the balls; not right now but soon, so you go ahead, spit flames at me for all I care, ‘cause what really hurts you is knowing that he’s so much better.”
Randall stood, the look on his face one of incandescent shock and Ennis leaned forward, said softly:
“You’re nothing more than a jealous little boy throwing a tantrum because you’re not gonna get where you want to be. I could feel sorry for you if things were a little different. Now why don’t you do yourself a favour and grow up?”
There was no comeback, no cheaply spoken bid for revenge, just solemn quietness that sounded like the most glorious music to Ennis’ ears, conditioned as they were to the spewing cusses and spiky insults that usually poured forth from the boy in front of him. Silence.
“Good choice,” Ennis said, turned, and walked away.
*
“What in the hell just happened, Ennis?” Jack asked as he ascended the bleachers, sat down to the right of him and felt the warmth of Jack’s knee press to his own like always, though now his leg was shaking, eyes bright as a bird’s feather and face twice as enchanting.
“We just talked,” Ennis replied, holding up his palms like white flags of surrender as he looked at the view in front of him and felt his breath stolen away, a flock of sparrows that were as tiny as currants from this distance fluttering in perfect gliding harmony to crest one mountain and scatter along it like leaves on a breeze. When he tipped his head back, he saw the first star biting through the sky’s canopy above him, its luminous white light curiously soothing. “I told him to leave you alone.”
“I don’t want you to put yourself on the line for me-” Jack began quietly, his hand burning warmth through the thin material of Ennis’ sweats, the touch so delicate that it was almost a caress; he closed his eyes helplessly, savouring it, nerves beneath his skin coming to register interest like bees drawn to the brightest flower in a huge burst of colour, whispers of different scent rising in wavy tendrils from each petal.
“I saw what he did, Jack…the way he looked at you. You were smiling at me and then it just-” He stopped, sighed, let Jack’s gentling fingers brush a stray curl back from his face, so tenderly that it might have been the touch of a mother, or a lover, depending which direction he let his thoughts stray towards. “I can’t stand back and watch him do this to you; you don’t understand how it makes me feel.”
“Ennis, I do…” Jack murmured.
“No. If you did then- then you wouldn’t want me to stop doing this for you.”
“Okay, so tell me, make me understand,” Jack soothed, voice so soft Ennis wanted to curl under it and sleep, as though it might shelter him from rain and snow, blanket him with the heat of affection. He took in a hit of the mountain air, so cold it stung as it filled his lungs, making him shiver from the inside as well as out; late November nights were too icy to stay out in for this long, and falteringly, trying to explain what not even he could fully comprehend, Ennis spoke.
“Just- every time, every time I care about someone, seems like I wind up doing something wrong by them. It always ends with sorry, Jack; I don’t want it to be that way with us, ‘cause then I’ll have hurt you and you’ve had too much of that already.” Ennis stopped and caught Jack’s gaze, his eyes naked and filled with sorrow, his point pressing into Jack’s heart like ice when he said: “I already lost someone, once.”
“Your brother…” Jack whispered, and the air seemed to frill slightly with ghosts recalled and known, white shadows of the past. Ennis was nodding slowly, biting at the tender skin of his lip.
“Had to say sorry to him; sorry that he was the one who got killed. Then it was my mom and dad, no way to get it right with them after that, sorry every fucking day for just not being the right boy. Every one I’ve cared for, all the closest people I mean…’s always ended with apologies. If the day ever comes and I have to say sorry to you, I’m never gonna forgive myself. That’s part of it…why I want to take care of things, make sure you’re okay.”
For long moments there was only the sound of the stars singing into being, the background blur of echoes stirring up from beneath the earth, broken only by the lonely cry of a wolf from the thick canopy of forests that lay on the south side of town; and then Jack turned to sit astride the bench, brought Ennis around to do the same and took both of his shaking hands, twined them with his own still, steady ones, spoke urgently.
“Ennis, I know you don’t see it but what she said to you, what your mom thinks about the accident…it’s not true. Trying to make you think you’re the one who should have died, that you’re not good enough- I don’t know much about how families should work ‘cause mine’s all shot to hell, but I know a little and that’s not right, not what a momma should be saying to her kids. And I mean- you were, what, how old? Ten, eleven? You don’t have a thing to be sorry for, Ennis. It’s just the way it worked out and I know it’s hurting you, but long as you keep thinking it should have been you, that there’s- I don’t know, preferences or somethin’- it’s gonna carry on stinging just as bad as it did the first few minutes after he died. He wasn’t better than you, Ennis, or worse somehow; the world wouldn’t have wound up brighter if it were him here today instead of you. You were both babies. Little kids. The lines don’t get drawn like that.” He leaned his forehead to Ennis’, ran his thumb delicately along his eyebrow, letting the sensation of his skin slip like a drug into his system, administered with touch’s slow needle. “You don’t have to feel bad, no matter what she says.” Pausing, Jack read the look in those warm amber eyes, trying to let the way he felt show in his own, step forward to light the darkness in Ennis’ mind with imagined fireworks, with hope, and then he nodded, whispered, “Just try for me; don’t pay her no mind.”
Ennis hesitated, squeezed Jack’s hands tightly and nodded, lay his temple against Jack’s cheek for a few moments and closed his eyes to let the wind’s icy chill wash away his shame, and he knew what he needed to say, had to find a way of getting there, making it to the moment in which his words would not choke him but slide easily, oil on water.
“Did Randall say stuff about me?” Jack asked, low, and Ennis felt the high flush fade into his own skin and knew how it felt, finally, to share secrets like this, to feel the lotus bud opening; now he stood on the threshold, its velvet embrace drawing closer with each second. “He usually- says things. It’s just…embarrassing, I guess.”
“He called you- said you’re…you’re queer. Like we’re in the 60s or something; no one even uses that word any more.” Ennis knew he was chattering inconsequentially, wanting to cover up the core issue, keep a safe distance and leave the jewel in the ashes alone; not get too close yet lest it turn and sting him. They both know where this was going.
Jack cast a long look out, his eyes glittering softly, skin pale as milk as he nodded, his appearance that of some silvered creature come from the depths of a world unknown to gift this one. His long exhalation unfolded on the air in wisps of smoke, weaving like vines.
“That’s what he always says. I don’t know what made him think it, how he came up with it; it might not be so bad if- if…” he trailed off quietly, swallowed hard and started again. “Might not be so bad if it weren’t the truth.”
The night was pressing in on them in slices of grey, but Ennis felt as though a sunbeam had broken out, scattering diamonds of light onto him, his heart thumping beneath its blanket of bones until he felt dizzy from it.
“He envies you, Jack, because you’re smart, because of- everything about you. He’d say anything if he thought it would cut deep enough.”
“It’s stupid; I mean I know he’s just saying it to hurt me, but it always gets to me. Says I’m weak, and I’m weak ‘cause I’m just a stupid queer. Then he starts on about how it makes me dirty; that I’ll go to Hell for it...” Jack’s voice had taken on the quality of someone who had heard the words they were recounting so many times it had begun to make a twisted kind of sense, but Ennis would stand for none of it.
“Well, you’ll have company,” he whispered, felt Jack’s gaze intent on his skin, blue eyes searching him out, knowing him so well now, and Ennis let his face be open and clear, let his truths shine out like glints of gold finally unearthed from beneath powdery waves of snow for Jack to cup in his hands, the warm glow captivating, and yet still he waited for the calm kindness in those eyes to switch off and become disgust. Though it was Jack’s truth as much of his own, Ennis thought that in himself, the characteristic might be contemptible.
“Wish I’d have known sooner,” Jack murmured fondly, catching a handful of honey curls in his hand like a butterfly in a net, then letting them go, the breeze ruffling them out into its chilled embrace, but Ennis scarcely noticed because Jack leaned in, kissed his forehead with what felt like all the compassion in the world compressed into it. He recognised it for what it was, a blessing; it had never occurred to him before that there could be this easy acceptance, that he could step out shaky and shy, newborn as the purest version of himself, and not feel the razor-thin bite of rejection, but here with Jack, this new knowledge a similarity instead of a difference, he was recognised for who he was and still a friend, still loved. No apologies needed.
*
He had longed for Jack soft, slow, smouldering; and now there was his voice sweet-slurred with sleepiness, more intoxicating than any alcohol that flooded blood through with bitter as they lay together under a makeshift galaxy, Ennis’ stars beaming illumination down from their nest on the ceiling in milky waves like the tide of the moon, to the bed beneath. Outside in the real sky, silent jags of lightning lashed from umber-lit clouds and the stars, reluctant to cry, sprinkled them down like the decorations of a wedding cake with not a single drop of rain for accompaniment, the momentary flashes of fresh light painting Jack and Ennis with silvery trails of shine, their eyes drinking everything in before it would taper, again, a short lapse into plum darkness before the cycle repeated itself. Time had been left at the front door, shed like skin as soon as they slid inside it; the ticking of the Grandfather clock in the living room with its ominous pendulum swinging from one side to the other, caught forever in single rhythm, might have been the harmonious morning strains of birdsong for all that it signified.
Jack lay on the inside of the bed; Ennis cupped around him like the palm of a hand, with wandering fingers walking the valley of bare skin from the silky hollow of elbow where the flesh was sensitive enough to have them both shiver slightly with every brush, down and down to trace veins that coursed with life until he reached Jack’s hand, fingers curled gently with the slow rush of oncoming slumber but opening like the buds of flowers at the slightest lingering stroke. Jack wanted to bottle the sensation for later; keep it in a velveteen pouch he could take out at any moment if he wished, unfurl its furred folds and find this feeling- of being touched as if he were something precious, beloved- shining there like coral captured in glass, to be snatched against his soul if he were ever missing it. The warmth of the covers, blanketing them with cotton that fluked through with air, combined with the delicious skin-to-skin stretch of radiating heat from beneath Ennis’ clothes, and he longed to peel away all disguises, discard denim and dust alike onto the ocean of floor beneath their vessel and leave them both naked, finally, to match the looks in their eyes where there was nothing except honeyed honesty, clear and sticky, there to stay. The bed was rocking, softly, so he thought, as though they were drifting down a river, until with the delayed understanding that was sleep’s signature, Jack realised it was Ennis’ body lulling him, flexing him slowly in time with the beat of their hearts before, summoning the last of his wakefulness, Jack turned himself away from the wall, now dappled finally with darts of rain reflected in from the lone window, and into the broad shelter of a man’s chest, dozing against it for a short while until a sudden roll of thunder outside broke over his half-dreams like ice and made him jolt in Ennis’ arms. Warm hands rubbed the fright out of him gently, an almost silent shhh hushing him to sleep’s doorstep once more, and Jack sighed with pleasure when his own seeking fingers found the creamy skin at the base of long arched spine to toy with, his nails rippling over the softness so lightly as to almost not be there before slipping up, up with one fingertip over the ridged shells of vertebrae, coming to rest finally against the angel’s wing of a shoulder blade, and Ennis’ touch was on his face now, following the line of his jaw.
Sometime between the last flash of lightning and the next flow of light into the room, when the rain had ebbed to a pleasing patter that scarcely entered either of their consciousness’, they came closer together as if drawn by circling scatters of magic, and Ennis’ lips pressed to the hollow of Jack’s throat, the sweet stretch of skin so achingly tender that he ran the wet tip of his tongue along the blue streak of a vein before he could even know he was doing it. The husky moan that the action elicited- part bliss, part startle, he thought- had him nuzzling against the silk of Jack’s hair, inhaling the scent of skin that was warm with the sweet bake of sleep and then finally tugging the tender flesh of one earlobe between his teeth, tongue flickering in a searing burst of edgy anticipation before he brushed his lips over the pale shell, and whispered:
“Kiss me…”
Jack’s hands clutched convulsively at the fabric of his t-shirt, his eyes drowned and, he saw, nervous; not just his first kiss with a man, Ennis knew, but his first with anyone- he only wished that it were his own as well, that he could have preserved the bee stung swell of just-kissed lips for this moment only. He fluttered his eyelashes once against the cupid’s bow of Jack’s mouth, flicking the tip of his tongue along it to take in the taste of the boy beside him; apples, and something cool like rainwater, crushed pearls, what exactly didn’t matter, but its presence was enough to send him seeking further. Ennis closed his eyes to see the smoky patterns that lingered on the back of the lids, printed colour in his blood, and let their kiss find its own way, the softest brush of their lips against each other making both of them begin to tremble; for a moment, the lingering seconds before friendship became more, they shared one another’s breath, and then Jack pressed up against him, intensely awkward, shaking, and somehow that made it all the more wonderful. His hands were sliding down, anywhere, to clutch at skin that he longed to see unhampered by clothes, and their feathery kisses became two, then three, each one a little more eager as lust peeled back from beneath the cover of their dozy embrace, until Ennis leaned down, scooped Jack into his arms completely and moved to lie on top of him, their chests pushing together with each shaking inhale to share a conjoined heartbeat that moved in tandem with the slow rhythm of their mouths. He wanted to be as silent as a mouse, hold all the feeling inside of himself so that he might come apart with it, entwined with its colour and sound as tightly as he was with Jack.
Finally he felt the warm wetness of those full lips parting beneath his own, the lotus bud taking him at last, and the nectar was sweeter, so much sweeter than he might ever have imagined, their hands brushing together as they both reached to cradle each other’s faces, Ennis slipping his tongue in deeply so that there was nothing, not even the air that they breathed, between them. When he eventually pulled away, lured by the silky skin of Jack’s neck once more to go there and taste, the response was instant; arms wrapped gently round his neck and he was brought back to where he was most wanted, to share endless winding kisses that left them both breathless, until even the occasional split of lightning in the sky faded out like a flickering candle, leaving only each other and the quiet cocoon they had created, a personal chrysalis. Ennis gasped at the sensation of his lower lip drawn in between Jack’s, his eyes fluttering closed as he was dosed with the divine venom of their combined taste, bloomed by daylight and ripened with lust; when they finally parted, it was only to draw breath and lock in the other’s slow gaze before they began to kiss again, helpless to fight the compulsion, and in the morning Jack’s neck would be stained with pale lovebites, blood rising to the surface just for the thrill of being closer to Ennis, the only important thing in a world veiled with mist. For those hours, somewhere in the quiet hallways between midnight and dawn, nothing else mattered, for now they had felt it, a sense like waves breaking overhead to drench their bodies with soul-deep warmth; the flickering fire of happiness held for fleeting moments in the cupped cradles of their hands.
To Be Continued...
Author: Mia
Rating: An R on the rocks, with a dash of NC-17 and a decorative umbrella if you’re so inclined ;)
Pairing: None other than Jack and Ennis.
Summary: This is going to be a dark story about possession, love and abuse in the high school setting.
Warnings: Sexual metaphors/prose and some sadness; mention of minor character death.
Disclaimer: Jack and Ennis are the fabulous creation of Annie Proulx. They don’t belong to me and I’m writing purely for fun, no money involved.
Feedback: This is my first multi-chapter fic, and it would be lovely to know how you think I’m doing. Previous chapters can be found on my LJ.
Chapter Seven is a significant part of Ennis’ journey and so there are some painful memories detailed- but it is a chapter about love, and if you’d like to know whether there’s a kiss involved, I hope you’ll read on and find out…;)
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep/ But I have promises to keep/ And miles to go before I sleep…”
Robert Frost
Chapter 7- A Cupid’s Arrow.
Ennis knew about love: he had seen it in shades of crimson, damasked and cold; longed for it in rainbow arches of neon; caught it in his hands and felt it slip away in blue ripples across the river of time. Love meant never having to say you were sorry, so the saying went, but all of Ennis’ loves had sung to that final melody eventually- for his brother, there had been I’m sorry it was you, and for his parents, after long months of slow-dawning realisation spread in one violent scarlet crush across his heart, temporarily eclipsing his grief, there had been I’m sorry I’m not him.
He remembered uttering that first declaration of love, that first apology, as clearly as if it were a matter of minutes rather than years since it had happened, tombstones in slots of 365 days etched in his mind as each one came to pass. Late at night- or sometimes even later, whilst he slept- Ennis would replay it, all the key components rising out of the mists and walking back to him down the valleys of memory: the high July sun, almost sarcastic in its brightness; the malicious peal of the telephone from down the hallway, seeping out around the closed front door like poison; and then the blunt crash of the brakes, high whining sound like the feedback on a radio tuned to a station that didn’t exist when the car tyres skidded, unravelling from their steel centre on impact. When he had stepped outside, the coils of rubber unpeeling lethargically onto the grass, listless after the expenditure of energy it had taken to hurt what Ennis loved, had looked like snakes, their glittering ebony eyes snuffed out to see no evil.
The man who had driven the car (Ennis felt nothing towards him in that moment, no hatred or malice; he might have been a counter on a board game for all that he meant in those first few horrific seconds) was standing at its side, knuckles pressed to his mouth as if to silence a slipstream of words that Ennis heard all too clearly: oh my god, oh my fucking god please no, but what good did that do; where was the use in praying now? There was blood running down the man’s face from a small slashed cut to his forehead; probably from the force of the air bag, probably nothing much, a stitch or two and then a scar, really just fucking nothing and so why was he crying, son of a bitch; what was his goddamn loss? The blood trailed desolately down the man’s face- and even now, he was still just The Man; Ennis had never let himself remember his name past the date of the inquest, frightened of what he might do with the dark knowledge if it was ever thrust into permanence within his hands- all the way to his chin, curving around the hollow of one eye before it descended, so he seemed to be crying blood, and Ennis had felt as though he were caught in between ice-thin wheels of celluloid, the black- and- white strips of a horror movie.
His brother had been pale; an arm, a leg bent at the wrong angles, and didn’t they always say oh, he just looked like he was sleeping, but he truly did except for the stark gush of blood laid out like a red carpet beneath him, his eyes peacefully closed, and it was only when Ennis, faced with the endless wait for the ambulance, had delicately drawn back one creamy white lid that he had seen the pupils fixed in a blank stare, scarcely responding to the pinprick of sunlight. He was still breathing, pulse fluttering weakly at the jugular or maybe it was another vein, the carotid; Ennis didn’t know, couldn’t bring himself to care so long as that precious butterfly’s wings kept beating, so he held one limp hand tight in his own, as though he could squeeze his own life into it. That was what he had wanted, to drain out the slow creep of death, drown it with vitality, with blood, synthesise cells with stardust until he was erased and his brother was shocked back, alive with the electric adrenaline in Ennis’ body. It was then that he had leaned down and whispered it into the unspoiled shell of an ear, not touched by spilled blood or stroked with mortality’s hand, so softly:
“I love you; I’m sorry it was you.”
Love meant having to say you were sorry.
*
Sometimes, though, since Jack- always and only since Jack- Ennis wondered if maybe he had gotten it mixed up, if perhaps the rules might bend or stretch, elastic with hope and spun from truth, every once in a while. Love for Jack had blindsided him from the ether, come in slow waves of wanting that lapped at the edges of his mind: at first just a staunch protectiveness, then the warm buzz of friendship, and now the beginning of a bloom into something else alongside that; something that made him wake up every few nights, like this one, with the moon spilling a glittering pool of light onto the empty pillow beside him and a question mark of surprise flickering low in his stomach- yet surprise, he thought, was not quite the right word for it. If Ennis let himself be honest, it was disappointment that haunted the long hours between midnight and dawn, disappointment that where his encircling arms expected to find Jack- curled naked and soft beside him with eyes that glowed silver, laced through with sleep and something else, too: the low smoulder of desire- there was only the open space between what he wanted and what there was; a bed that was empty on one side and Ennis’ slow exhalation of held breath drifting like smoke up to the ceiling, the substitution for a shared cigarette in his dream’s afterglow.
Ennis felt as though he had peeled away the fruits of a lust lotus flower, and found himself at the door of the tender green bud that had lain in wait over the years, watching for the watershed, searching for the right mix of hormones- sparked now between him and Jack like light, bright stars- to send the feathery white petals, dipped at their apex with dusky pink, fluttering down to break the surface of the silent waters beneath, arched emerald and voluptuous as teardrops. Now, though, as the petals meandered slowly out of sight, he was left wondering whether the mint bud would forever remain sealed to him, or if it was just a matter of time before the flesh would yield to him and stream open, send sweet nectar flooding like honey to quench a mutual thirst, sugared with acceptance and bitten through with the clarity of what it was to know the very heart of Jack, for Ennis to bear all his secrets as if they were his own.
He had seen those blue eyes sometimes, opened out like a summer sky before him and flushed with gilt-edged trust, and had listened to words from those rosebud lips that were meant only for him to hear, but still he knew there were parts of Jack’s mind that flashed and sparkled with mystery; events left unmentioned, a lost father still unexplained, and no matter how he longed to hear it, he didn’t want to push too hard for the knowledge to be granted unwillingly. One of his favourite things about Jack was that every laugh, every touch, every concerned look when Ennis was feeling low, had been earned slowly, by simple things: being kind, being there when it mattered and even when it didn’t, when all they did for the day was spin out their reams of conversation on glittery feeds of friendship. He had walked into enough cheap companionship to understand that what was forged on false elements would fall apart sooner or later; but he and Jack were built with the balmy consistency of solidarity, and that was how Ennis felt around him- safe, steady, his steps measured by a balance that came with knowing Jack would be willing to fall with him were he ever to lose it.
Lying down, his hands a safe pillow for the whirling weight of his mind, Ennis knew that all it really came down to when the taste of the last girl’s lipstick- synthetic cherries and cold crème- faded from his mouth, was who he wanted to turn and see beside him every morning: the flowing curves of a woman, with a heart-shaped face and hips that held a warm cradle of fertility nestled between them, or a man- Jack, of course- with all of that lean sweet strength, broad shoulders set by the natural wiry cuts of muscle in his back. The answer was one Ennis did not have to stop and ponder, for he had recognised its presence within himself for years, bedded down amongst the neat All-American façade that he had carefully preserved like one blue moon in a row of white; it was his truth and yet his lie, a secret that not even Jack knew. Girls had been curious to him, exotic with all of their lace and sweeping intellect; scent and smoky eyes every day that reminded him of the women he liked to draw: diaphanous angelic creatures with hair that sent rays of sunlight ricocheting in a spectacular waterfall of gold every which way. There had been an art class he’d gone to outside school, and on their first day of Life Drawing, as Ennis had somehow sensed would be the case, he had found himself sitting not four metres from one of the loveliest women he had ever laid eyes on, her eyes set like liquid amber and the rest of her frame just as fluid, skin the colour of cocoa; the heat in the room had risen almost unbearably from his male counterparts, and yet Ennis had felt nothing, no flickering candle of heat in his stomach, as though someone had flicked a switch to OFF and left it there, just out of his clamouring reach. It was then that he had truly known.
Jack was his first real crush, marking the first time Ennis had looked at another man and experienced the multitude of symptoms that had eluded him throughout his months spent dating women; all shaking hands and a stomach that bloomed with the powdery wings of butterflies, shaded in every colour from purple pleasure to yellow yearning and back again. He liked the way Jack had one tooth that sat slightly crooked, giving his grin a wolfish edge that was always guaranteed to make Ennis’ own smile come out to play, shy as a child, and sometimes when Jack was tired but found something funny, his laugh would go husky as if infused with dusty smoke, burning deep in his lungs but even more fiercely in Ennis’ chest, where the swell of emotion would be unstoppable, thick enough to taste its salty tang on his tongue. There were so many things, little tics that belonged to Jack and made his heart sing every time he saw them: the way he always sat on Ennis’ left side and touched their knees together, with a little tap as if to say Here I am, his perpetual habit of painting himself with pens all day long so that when they met at the end of the day, Jack would be tattooed with swarms of stars, flowers, once even a tiny Indian elephant with its trunk raised up triumphantly; anything at all might be there adorning Jack’s wrists, and he would look forward to seeing it, guess whether it would be animals or planets, great solar systems of weaving black ink, spliced with flashes of neon colour so that the elephant was throwing a sapphire blue wink, and the stars could be supernovas, fizzing purple and orange like a vitamin tablet in water.
Tired now, his mind finally beginning to slow with the clock ticking just past three, Ennis turned onto his stomach, closed his eyes. Let misty fronds of the last dream rise up from the heat of the fevered sheets he lay on, the sweet tenor of Jack’s moans, illusory and soft, lulling him back to sleep.
*
Friday came once more, pink as newborn skin, and Jack sat up at the top of the bleachers, unseen by anyone on the field in front of him except Ennis. He kept his eyes turned away from the small alcove where they had first met, with its rusty steel bench and walls dashed through with the jagged edges of pebbles; a flash of his own blood, blackened now that the weeks had passed, still caught your eye if you happened to walk past it at just the right angle, like a circle that might never be scrubbed clean no matter how hard he tried. Yet from this height, the distant calls of the boys beneath sounded unreal, thrown into vague reflection that barely seemed as if it could exist so high up, where the air was thin enough to fill him with blissful euphoria, take away the blunt hit of oxygen from his lungs and merge it with something else drowsy and soft. Jack felt as though he might be able to reach out and touch the sun-warmed grit and dozing clover of the mountains opposite, flooded with streaming chasms of light, tempering their rough edges with a lavender aura that looked as though it had been filtered through water and dosed with mist. He loved fall.
Something caught his eye, and Jack looked down to see Ennis holding a hand up, to show him it would be five minutes until the end of his football practice. His face was apologetic for making his friend wait; why he thought it was a problem Jack would never know, because his heart skipped a beat every time it alit on Ennis’ form, dressed in the same grey sweats as every other person on the pitch, but standing out as if he were ringed with a beacon of light. Randall, standing sullenly in the corner with his gaze cast down to the frozen tufts of grass beneath his feet, caught the gesture and raised a mocking hand to Jack, smile flashing with the sharp teeth of a serpent, and Jack felt the plateau of comfortable peace that had lined his stomach like sugar just a few moments before become bitter lemon, the acidic taste of fear pressing into his throat with all the impact of a punch. In his mind, he saw the plastic red handles of little children’s scissors, slicing through skin as thin as paper to meet its colour match beneath, wreathed in blood.
He’s always gonna get you somehow, Jack.
The quiet shattered, spread shards that were sharp enough to tear into the soft flesh of his safety, and left it for dead on the side of a long road to nowhere.
*
Looking into the dark tar of Randall’s eyes was like standing at the opening of a grate and seeing down between the bars, frosted with tears, to the dark vortex beneath where Jack sat curled and broken, dirt marring the tender skin beneath his nails with his frantic efforts to crawl out, but Ennis looked into them anyway, his stare steady and unflinching. The last rose of his resolve withered and died, leaving only the thorns, no longer obscured by prettied-up petals, a skeletal façade in the face of this new outrage; the look of hunted sorrow on Jack’s face, so darkly contrasted with the serene smile that had flickered there before like a shooting star, was burned into his mind so quickly that he felt he might scream with it. The shrill call of Coach’s final whistle seemed like a cry for battle and he flew down the pitch in pursuit of the ball to collect it, with hands that longed so fiercely to curl into fists they ached; Randall cut across him and dodged the ball out of his path, and oh what sweet triumph it was to see that, exactly what he had thought would happen folding out like a map of revenge, inked with sparkling yellow fury.
A sheaf of ice spread thick as molasses on the turf ahead of them sent Randall down to the floor, panting for crushed breath, and Ennis was on him in a second, casting a glance back to see that they were the subject of no one’s interest right now, though they might well be soon. He thought he had maybe sixty seconds to press his point, and he intended to make them the longest that the boy beneath him had ever experienced, even though Ennis was not going to speak with his fists, ripe as the temptation was. Being around Jack had only proved what he had already generalised for himself: the path that ended with a punch gave prizes to no man, but pain for each.
“Get the hell off, Ennis!” Randall hissed, struggling mightily as Ennis hauled him to his feet, kept one hand knotted tight as wire on his shirt, “You knew I would slip, you fucker!”
“You listen to me,” Ennis began, and something in his tone must have said all the words for him because the writhing muscles under his hand steadied, going as still as the surface of a lake in as long as it took to skim a stone across it, creating flowing waves of ripples foamed with lacy aqua as far as the eye could see and then nothing else, but the stone would roll unknown, land on the river floor, sending up a plume of silted dirt to remain there forever; water never moving quite the same way again. “And you better listen good ‘cause I’m gonna say this to you one time, and I ain’t fooling. Time’s up, and I’m not taking another minute of your shit; you better get back in line and get there fast or I’ll get you there myself, hear me? You leave him the fuck alone. He’s got nothin’ to do with you, none of your concern, don’t need to hear your opinion on a single thing in my life and Jack’s one of them.”
“My arm hurts, I need to-” Randall whined, an obvious falsity since Ennis had been careful to restrain him as little as possible, but in this shaded space of vengeance, anything was fresh ammunition.
“Oh really, huh? You think that’s pain, you son-of-a-bitch? Well, I tell you what, how ‘bout you and Jack switch round for a day, see how good you feel with your whole fucking body busted half the time and then, then you can have the front to tell me you think you’re hurting, okay? How much d’you think he hurts Randall; how much damage d’you think you’re doing? C’mon! Why’n’t you be a man for once and face up to what you do, admit what you are?”
The misery face was replaced suddenly with contorted venom, words rolling out from above a sour atmosphere that snuffed out each star with the ivory fingers of ghosts, slick as silk.
“Yeah, and what am I? Least I’m not some white-trash queer without two dimes to rub together!”
“You don’t fool me,” Ennis growled, “I know what your problem is, could write you out like the palm of my hand. He’s all the things you’re never gonna be, right? Except it’s not quite like you try to make out, it’s not that he’s poor and you’re not; it’s a whole lot more complex than that, isn’t it? ‘Cause he’s smart, and you’re not. And he made something of himself, got himself into one of the best schools around off his own back, instead of relying on Mom and Dad’s bucks to do all the work for him. Jack’s gonna sail into Harvard at the end of this year if he wants to and what’re you gonna do, scare the teachers into marking your Report Card good, steal your resume off the internet ‘cause you know you sure as hell don’t have a hope of getting in there based on all that non-existent intellect? One day you’re going to be in an office doing the daily grind like anyone else on earth, and you’re gonna look up and see a real fuckin’ familiar face sitting at the head of the table earning the kind of money you’ve only dreamt about, and it’s gonna be him, or someone like him! The Jacks in this world have got you by the balls; not right now but soon, so you go ahead, spit flames at me for all I care, ‘cause what really hurts you is knowing that he’s so much better.”
Randall stood, the look on his face one of incandescent shock and Ennis leaned forward, said softly:
“You’re nothing more than a jealous little boy throwing a tantrum because you’re not gonna get where you want to be. I could feel sorry for you if things were a little different. Now why don’t you do yourself a favour and grow up?”
There was no comeback, no cheaply spoken bid for revenge, just solemn quietness that sounded like the most glorious music to Ennis’ ears, conditioned as they were to the spewing cusses and spiky insults that usually poured forth from the boy in front of him. Silence.
“Good choice,” Ennis said, turned, and walked away.
*
“What in the hell just happened, Ennis?” Jack asked as he ascended the bleachers, sat down to the right of him and felt the warmth of Jack’s knee press to his own like always, though now his leg was shaking, eyes bright as a bird’s feather and face twice as enchanting.
“We just talked,” Ennis replied, holding up his palms like white flags of surrender as he looked at the view in front of him and felt his breath stolen away, a flock of sparrows that were as tiny as currants from this distance fluttering in perfect gliding harmony to crest one mountain and scatter along it like leaves on a breeze. When he tipped his head back, he saw the first star biting through the sky’s canopy above him, its luminous white light curiously soothing. “I told him to leave you alone.”
“I don’t want you to put yourself on the line for me-” Jack began quietly, his hand burning warmth through the thin material of Ennis’ sweats, the touch so delicate that it was almost a caress; he closed his eyes helplessly, savouring it, nerves beneath his skin coming to register interest like bees drawn to the brightest flower in a huge burst of colour, whispers of different scent rising in wavy tendrils from each petal.
“I saw what he did, Jack…the way he looked at you. You were smiling at me and then it just-” He stopped, sighed, let Jack’s gentling fingers brush a stray curl back from his face, so tenderly that it might have been the touch of a mother, or a lover, depending which direction he let his thoughts stray towards. “I can’t stand back and watch him do this to you; you don’t understand how it makes me feel.”
“Ennis, I do…” Jack murmured.
“No. If you did then- then you wouldn’t want me to stop doing this for you.”
“Okay, so tell me, make me understand,” Jack soothed, voice so soft Ennis wanted to curl under it and sleep, as though it might shelter him from rain and snow, blanket him with the heat of affection. He took in a hit of the mountain air, so cold it stung as it filled his lungs, making him shiver from the inside as well as out; late November nights were too icy to stay out in for this long, and falteringly, trying to explain what not even he could fully comprehend, Ennis spoke.
“Just- every time, every time I care about someone, seems like I wind up doing something wrong by them. It always ends with sorry, Jack; I don’t want it to be that way with us, ‘cause then I’ll have hurt you and you’ve had too much of that already.” Ennis stopped and caught Jack’s gaze, his eyes naked and filled with sorrow, his point pressing into Jack’s heart like ice when he said: “I already lost someone, once.”
“Your brother…” Jack whispered, and the air seemed to frill slightly with ghosts recalled and known, white shadows of the past. Ennis was nodding slowly, biting at the tender skin of his lip.
“Had to say sorry to him; sorry that he was the one who got killed. Then it was my mom and dad, no way to get it right with them after that, sorry every fucking day for just not being the right boy. Every one I’ve cared for, all the closest people I mean…’s always ended with apologies. If the day ever comes and I have to say sorry to you, I’m never gonna forgive myself. That’s part of it…why I want to take care of things, make sure you’re okay.”
For long moments there was only the sound of the stars singing into being, the background blur of echoes stirring up from beneath the earth, broken only by the lonely cry of a wolf from the thick canopy of forests that lay on the south side of town; and then Jack turned to sit astride the bench, brought Ennis around to do the same and took both of his shaking hands, twined them with his own still, steady ones, spoke urgently.
“Ennis, I know you don’t see it but what she said to you, what your mom thinks about the accident…it’s not true. Trying to make you think you’re the one who should have died, that you’re not good enough- I don’t know much about how families should work ‘cause mine’s all shot to hell, but I know a little and that’s not right, not what a momma should be saying to her kids. And I mean- you were, what, how old? Ten, eleven? You don’t have a thing to be sorry for, Ennis. It’s just the way it worked out and I know it’s hurting you, but long as you keep thinking it should have been you, that there’s- I don’t know, preferences or somethin’- it’s gonna carry on stinging just as bad as it did the first few minutes after he died. He wasn’t better than you, Ennis, or worse somehow; the world wouldn’t have wound up brighter if it were him here today instead of you. You were both babies. Little kids. The lines don’t get drawn like that.” He leaned his forehead to Ennis’, ran his thumb delicately along his eyebrow, letting the sensation of his skin slip like a drug into his system, administered with touch’s slow needle. “You don’t have to feel bad, no matter what she says.” Pausing, Jack read the look in those warm amber eyes, trying to let the way he felt show in his own, step forward to light the darkness in Ennis’ mind with imagined fireworks, with hope, and then he nodded, whispered, “Just try for me; don’t pay her no mind.”
Ennis hesitated, squeezed Jack’s hands tightly and nodded, lay his temple against Jack’s cheek for a few moments and closed his eyes to let the wind’s icy chill wash away his shame, and he knew what he needed to say, had to find a way of getting there, making it to the moment in which his words would not choke him but slide easily, oil on water.
“Did Randall say stuff about me?” Jack asked, low, and Ennis felt the high flush fade into his own skin and knew how it felt, finally, to share secrets like this, to feel the lotus bud opening; now he stood on the threshold, its velvet embrace drawing closer with each second. “He usually- says things. It’s just…embarrassing, I guess.”
“He called you- said you’re…you’re queer. Like we’re in the 60s or something; no one even uses that word any more.” Ennis knew he was chattering inconsequentially, wanting to cover up the core issue, keep a safe distance and leave the jewel in the ashes alone; not get too close yet lest it turn and sting him. They both know where this was going.
Jack cast a long look out, his eyes glittering softly, skin pale as milk as he nodded, his appearance that of some silvered creature come from the depths of a world unknown to gift this one. His long exhalation unfolded on the air in wisps of smoke, weaving like vines.
“That’s what he always says. I don’t know what made him think it, how he came up with it; it might not be so bad if- if…” he trailed off quietly, swallowed hard and started again. “Might not be so bad if it weren’t the truth.”
The night was pressing in on them in slices of grey, but Ennis felt as though a sunbeam had broken out, scattering diamonds of light onto him, his heart thumping beneath its blanket of bones until he felt dizzy from it.
“He envies you, Jack, because you’re smart, because of- everything about you. He’d say anything if he thought it would cut deep enough.”
“It’s stupid; I mean I know he’s just saying it to hurt me, but it always gets to me. Says I’m weak, and I’m weak ‘cause I’m just a stupid queer. Then he starts on about how it makes me dirty; that I’ll go to Hell for it...” Jack’s voice had taken on the quality of someone who had heard the words they were recounting so many times it had begun to make a twisted kind of sense, but Ennis would stand for none of it.
“Well, you’ll have company,” he whispered, felt Jack’s gaze intent on his skin, blue eyes searching him out, knowing him so well now, and Ennis let his face be open and clear, let his truths shine out like glints of gold finally unearthed from beneath powdery waves of snow for Jack to cup in his hands, the warm glow captivating, and yet still he waited for the calm kindness in those eyes to switch off and become disgust. Though it was Jack’s truth as much of his own, Ennis thought that in himself, the characteristic might be contemptible.
“Wish I’d have known sooner,” Jack murmured fondly, catching a handful of honey curls in his hand like a butterfly in a net, then letting them go, the breeze ruffling them out into its chilled embrace, but Ennis scarcely noticed because Jack leaned in, kissed his forehead with what felt like all the compassion in the world compressed into it. He recognised it for what it was, a blessing; it had never occurred to him before that there could be this easy acceptance, that he could step out shaky and shy, newborn as the purest version of himself, and not feel the razor-thin bite of rejection, but here with Jack, this new knowledge a similarity instead of a difference, he was recognised for who he was and still a friend, still loved. No apologies needed.
*
He had longed for Jack soft, slow, smouldering; and now there was his voice sweet-slurred with sleepiness, more intoxicating than any alcohol that flooded blood through with bitter as they lay together under a makeshift galaxy, Ennis’ stars beaming illumination down from their nest on the ceiling in milky waves like the tide of the moon, to the bed beneath. Outside in the real sky, silent jags of lightning lashed from umber-lit clouds and the stars, reluctant to cry, sprinkled them down like the decorations of a wedding cake with not a single drop of rain for accompaniment, the momentary flashes of fresh light painting Jack and Ennis with silvery trails of shine, their eyes drinking everything in before it would taper, again, a short lapse into plum darkness before the cycle repeated itself. Time had been left at the front door, shed like skin as soon as they slid inside it; the ticking of the Grandfather clock in the living room with its ominous pendulum swinging from one side to the other, caught forever in single rhythm, might have been the harmonious morning strains of birdsong for all that it signified.
Jack lay on the inside of the bed; Ennis cupped around him like the palm of a hand, with wandering fingers walking the valley of bare skin from the silky hollow of elbow where the flesh was sensitive enough to have them both shiver slightly with every brush, down and down to trace veins that coursed with life until he reached Jack’s hand, fingers curled gently with the slow rush of oncoming slumber but opening like the buds of flowers at the slightest lingering stroke. Jack wanted to bottle the sensation for later; keep it in a velveteen pouch he could take out at any moment if he wished, unfurl its furred folds and find this feeling- of being touched as if he were something precious, beloved- shining there like coral captured in glass, to be snatched against his soul if he were ever missing it. The warmth of the covers, blanketing them with cotton that fluked through with air, combined with the delicious skin-to-skin stretch of radiating heat from beneath Ennis’ clothes, and he longed to peel away all disguises, discard denim and dust alike onto the ocean of floor beneath their vessel and leave them both naked, finally, to match the looks in their eyes where there was nothing except honeyed honesty, clear and sticky, there to stay. The bed was rocking, softly, so he thought, as though they were drifting down a river, until with the delayed understanding that was sleep’s signature, Jack realised it was Ennis’ body lulling him, flexing him slowly in time with the beat of their hearts before, summoning the last of his wakefulness, Jack turned himself away from the wall, now dappled finally with darts of rain reflected in from the lone window, and into the broad shelter of a man’s chest, dozing against it for a short while until a sudden roll of thunder outside broke over his half-dreams like ice and made him jolt in Ennis’ arms. Warm hands rubbed the fright out of him gently, an almost silent shhh hushing him to sleep’s doorstep once more, and Jack sighed with pleasure when his own seeking fingers found the creamy skin at the base of long arched spine to toy with, his nails rippling over the softness so lightly as to almost not be there before slipping up, up with one fingertip over the ridged shells of vertebrae, coming to rest finally against the angel’s wing of a shoulder blade, and Ennis’ touch was on his face now, following the line of his jaw.
Sometime between the last flash of lightning and the next flow of light into the room, when the rain had ebbed to a pleasing patter that scarcely entered either of their consciousness’, they came closer together as if drawn by circling scatters of magic, and Ennis’ lips pressed to the hollow of Jack’s throat, the sweet stretch of skin so achingly tender that he ran the wet tip of his tongue along the blue streak of a vein before he could even know he was doing it. The husky moan that the action elicited- part bliss, part startle, he thought- had him nuzzling against the silk of Jack’s hair, inhaling the scent of skin that was warm with the sweet bake of sleep and then finally tugging the tender flesh of one earlobe between his teeth, tongue flickering in a searing burst of edgy anticipation before he brushed his lips over the pale shell, and whispered:
“Kiss me…”
Jack’s hands clutched convulsively at the fabric of his t-shirt, his eyes drowned and, he saw, nervous; not just his first kiss with a man, Ennis knew, but his first with anyone- he only wished that it were his own as well, that he could have preserved the bee stung swell of just-kissed lips for this moment only. He fluttered his eyelashes once against the cupid’s bow of Jack’s mouth, flicking the tip of his tongue along it to take in the taste of the boy beside him; apples, and something cool like rainwater, crushed pearls, what exactly didn’t matter, but its presence was enough to send him seeking further. Ennis closed his eyes to see the smoky patterns that lingered on the back of the lids, printed colour in his blood, and let their kiss find its own way, the softest brush of their lips against each other making both of them begin to tremble; for a moment, the lingering seconds before friendship became more, they shared one another’s breath, and then Jack pressed up against him, intensely awkward, shaking, and somehow that made it all the more wonderful. His hands were sliding down, anywhere, to clutch at skin that he longed to see unhampered by clothes, and their feathery kisses became two, then three, each one a little more eager as lust peeled back from beneath the cover of their dozy embrace, until Ennis leaned down, scooped Jack into his arms completely and moved to lie on top of him, their chests pushing together with each shaking inhale to share a conjoined heartbeat that moved in tandem with the slow rhythm of their mouths. He wanted to be as silent as a mouse, hold all the feeling inside of himself so that he might come apart with it, entwined with its colour and sound as tightly as he was with Jack.
Finally he felt the warm wetness of those full lips parting beneath his own, the lotus bud taking him at last, and the nectar was sweeter, so much sweeter than he might ever have imagined, their hands brushing together as they both reached to cradle each other’s faces, Ennis slipping his tongue in deeply so that there was nothing, not even the air that they breathed, between them. When he eventually pulled away, lured by the silky skin of Jack’s neck once more to go there and taste, the response was instant; arms wrapped gently round his neck and he was brought back to where he was most wanted, to share endless winding kisses that left them both breathless, until even the occasional split of lightning in the sky faded out like a flickering candle, leaving only each other and the quiet cocoon they had created, a personal chrysalis. Ennis gasped at the sensation of his lower lip drawn in between Jack’s, his eyes fluttering closed as he was dosed with the divine venom of their combined taste, bloomed by daylight and ripened with lust; when they finally parted, it was only to draw breath and lock in the other’s slow gaze before they began to kiss again, helpless to fight the compulsion, and in the morning Jack’s neck would be stained with pale lovebites, blood rising to the surface just for the thrill of being closer to Ennis, the only important thing in a world veiled with mist. For those hours, somewhere in the quiet hallways between midnight and dawn, nothing else mattered, for now they had felt it, a sense like waves breaking overhead to drench their bodies with soul-deep warmth; the flickering fire of happiness held for fleeting moments in the cupped cradles of their hands.
To Be Continued...