Going Left Around the World: Chapter 46
Title: Going Left Around the World
Author: mrs-spamlad
Pairing: Jack/Ennis
Rating: R
Feedback: have at it!
Disclaimer: Brokeback Mountain and the original characters of Jack and Ennis were created by and belong to Annie Proulx. No money is being made from this- I’m just taking them out for a spin!
Summary: This is an au/au story told in the first person from Jack’s POV. Jack and Ennis both come from working-class families and bond as the outcast poor kids while attending an expensive private school. The story follows their friendship as they go off to college together and eventually become something more than friends. Love springs up, inconvenient but essential all the same, and they fight to find a way to make it work through their college years. After graduation, however, real life takes over and sends them down different paths, and the fight is on for real as they try to decide if their relationship can overcome their own insecurities and fears.
A/N: Well, it’s not Wednesday, but I thought I’d post anyway since the chapter is ready and I left any semblance of a schedule in the dust long ago. I hope you don’t mind a Thursday post!
One quick note for this chapter for those of you who might wonder: the QEW is The Queen Elizabeth Way, and it’s the major highway you take into Canada from where the guys are crossing the border.
Many thanks to Judy for her beta work and feedback on the chapter. Thanks also to Camilla and Jane for pre-reading and cheering me on. J
And now, New Year’s Eve - hope you enjoy!
jill
Chapter 46
“Jack.” I felt a gentle shake on my shoulder. “Jack!” The shake became an insistent tap.
I swatted in the general direction of the voice and hand, and groaned. “Jesus, Ennis! Leave me alone. Tired.” I began to burrow further under the covers only to have them ripped off of me. I rolled over, my vision blurry from having my eyes closed so long, and saw Ennis standing beside the bed, complete with huffing and nostrils flaring like a pissed off bull ready to charge.
“You’re not fucking tired,” he rumbled in his don’t-fuck-with-me voice. “You’ve been in bed since we got back, except to piss and eat half a sandwich! There’s no way you’re still fucking tired!”
He was right, I knew. It wasn’t so much that I was tired anymore. I had been when we got home, and I slept for a good long while. But at some point, the sleeping turned into laying in bed with my eyes closed, just so I didn’t have to be anywhere else or think about anything. I flopped onto my back and draped an arm over my eyes. “Fine. I’m not tired. I just wanna stay here, so leave me alone,” I said flatly.
I heard him expel a long breath and felt the edge of the bed dip as he sat down. When nothing else happened, I dropped my arm from my eyes and looked over at his back. The room was dark, but with the glow from the hall light, I could see his shoulders were slumped and his elbows were on his knees. I reached out and hooked a finger on the waistband of his jeans and tugged gently. “Hey,” I said. “Come here.”
He shook his head. “Uh-uh.”
“Okay,” I said, letting go of his jeans and scooting a little closer. “What then?”
He sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know. I have no fucking clue,” he said softly. I ran my finger up and down the length of his spine, waiting for him to say more, which he finally did. “You’ve just been in here all this time, and you’re not eating, or talking…. I know you’re all messed up over your mom and the holidays and shit - I get that. But you can’t just…. I don’t know what to do. You’re freaking me out.”
He sounded so defeated, and even though I couldn’t really help how I was reacting to everything, I still felt like total shit for making him worry. I took hold of his arm and pulled a little, and he slowly shifted around to face me. He kept his eyes on his lap for a few long seconds, but when he raised them to meet mine and I saw they were all shiny underneath the deep worry creases in his brow, I wanted to throw up.
I sighed and laced our fingers together. “I’m okay,” I said. He raised an eyebrow, wordlessly calling bullshit on that one. “All right, I’m not okay, exactly. I don’t know what I am. I just want it all to go away. I wish everything was different, not like this. It’s too hard.”
He dropped his gaze again and ran his thumb over the back of my hand. “Yeah. I know what you mean,” he whispered.
It suffices to say that we weren’t talking about the same things in that moment, but I had no clue about that right then. We sat in silence for a minute, I guess both wishing to fix our separate, seemingly unfixable things. It all just made me want to go back to not-sleep, though, so when his gaze flickered up to mine again, I took the opening.
“Did you eat yet?” I asked. “What time is it, anyway?”
“It’s almost six. No, I didn’t have anything. Was kinda waiting to see if you were gonna be hungry or what.”
“Oh,” I said. Truthfully, food sounded fucking awful just then, but I knew I needed to get my ass out of bed, for both our sakes. “Yeah, I could eat.”
“Yeah?” he asked, brightening a bit. “What do you want? We have frozen pizza, stuff for grilled cheese, hot dogs, Spaghettios….”
Before he inventoried the entire kitchen, I jumped on his last suggestion. “Spaghettios are good,” I said. They required minimal effort, almost no chewing, and hopefully, they’d just sit in my stomach and behave themselves.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go heat ‘em up.”
“I’m gonna take a quick shower,” I said, pulling myself into a fully upright position for the first time in a day and turning on the bedside lamp. “Think I need it.”
“I’ll say,” he mumbled, but when I whipped my head around to glare at him, I saw he was trying unsuccessfully to stifle a smirk.
“Fuck you, dude,” I said with a laugh. I shucked off my boxers and my t-shirt, then had a nice, long stretch. When I looked back at Ennis, his eyes were focused right on my dick, so I ran my hand over it. “See something you like?” I asked, cupping my hand under my balls.
“Huh?” he asked, dragging his eyes up to my face.
I snorted. “Never mind.” I headed for the door, but as I brushed by him, he reached for me. “No way!” I said, jumping out into the hall and out of range. “I’m way too nasty for you. Might get your hands dirty.”
He rolled his eyes and I grinned and continued down the hall to the bathroom, ready to attempt to rejoin the land of the living, at least for one night.
*****
A half an hour later, we were seated at the kitchen table with bowls of Spaghettios in front of us. We weren’t talking, but it wasn’t a mad kind of silence - just the kind where nobody’s talking, but it’s okay. I scraped my spoon across the bottom of the bowl, swallowed the last spoonful, then sat back in my chair.
“It’s Friday, right?” I asked, scratching my belly under my t-shirt.
“Yeah,” he said. Then after a pause, he added, “New Year’s Eve.”
I furrowed my brow and did the math in my head. Somewhere along the way, I’d lost track of what day it was, and the fact that there was still another holiday looming over us had really escaped my notice the past couple days. “Shit,” I said, scrubbing a hand over my face. “I didn’t even think of that.” Every year we did something on New Year’s Eve, whether we were with our parents or up at school, and that year it was an even bigger deal, since it was the beginning of a whole new millennium. As much as the thought of ringing it in alone depressed the hell out of me, I wasn’t up for a party or anything like that, and I didn’t want Ennis to miss the chance to go out and have fun. “You got any plans?” I asked.
He looked up from his now-empty bowl and studied me for a few long seconds before he answered. “No,” he said carefully. “There’s stuff going on - parties and shit - but I didn’t say I’d be anywhere for sure.”
“Oh,” I said, not sure what was supposed to come next.
“D’you think you might wanna go to -”
I didn’t even let him finish the question. I stood up, shaking my head, and carried my bowl over to the sink. “Uh-uh. No way do I wanna be stuck in the middle of a bunch of loud-ass, wasted people I don’t even know. I’m not up for that.”
“Jesus, you sound like you’re fifty or something,” he said.
“Whatever. If you wanna go out, that’s cool. But I’m not.” I walked out of the kitchen into the living room and flopped down on the couch. A few minutes later, Ennis came in and sat on the opposite end. We both stared at the TV while I flipped through channels. Eventually, I stopped on some countdown show of the best songs of the nineties, and we sat watching that for a while. I had just started to nod off yet again, when Ennis snatched the remote control off my lap and scared the shit out of me.
“Jesus Christ! What the hell?” I yelled as he shut off the TV.
He tossed the remote onto the couch between us. “This is what you wanna do for New Year’s Eve? Sit on the couch and watch shitty television until you fall asleep again?” he demanded.
I sighed and threw my arms up in the air. “What the fuck do you want me to say, huh? Yeah, fine, that’s exactly what I wanna do.”
He sat quietly for a minute, staring at his hands dangling between his knees. Then he looked up and locked eyes with me. “No,” he said.
“No? Whaddaya mean ‘no’?” I asked incredulously.
He took a deep breath and said, “No, that’s not how we’re going to fucking spend New Year’s Eve. Go get dressed.”
“I already told you! I’m not going to some goddamn party so I can -”
He held up a hand to stop me. “We won’t go to a party, okay? We’ll just… I don’t know. We’ll go somewhere. You have to get out of this fucking house, Jack.” I didn’t say anything right away, and my waffling must have shown on my face, because he added, “Please.”
He almost never directly asked me for anything and, despite my lack of interest in just about everything, I didn’t want him pissed at me. “Fine. But no parties.”
“Right,” he said, and I trudged off to go make myself presentable for the outside world.
*****
A little while later, we were in Ennis’s car and headed to… somewhere. I figured we were going to a movie or something like that, so I didn’t pay much attention. After some undetermined amount of time watching the darkness go whizzing past outside my window, it occurred to me that we should have gotten to a movie theater a while ago if that’s where we were going. And we were on the interstate.
“Uh, where the hell are we going?” I asked, glancing over at him.
“North,” he said.
“No shit. I can read the signs. I mean, where is our destination?”
“Canada.”
“Canada? What the fuck are you talking about?” There were no signs to indicate that he was joking, so I could only assume that we were, in fact, headed to Canada.
“Well, I was trying to think of somewhere to go that wasn’t a party, or full of people from school, and then I thought it might be kinda cool to go up to The Falls. They must have fireworks or something for New Year’s Eve. And we can drink if we want to. ”
It was only about an hour and a half drive from our place to Niagara Falls, and the fact that the drinking age there was 19 made it a huge draw for college students from the US. Not that I was aiming to get tanked or anything, but it was kind of nice to know you could without breaking any laws. “Oh. Okay,” I said.
He glanced over at me, his eyebrows raised in question. “Is it okay? You said no parties, and I’m sure there’ll be lots of people there, but I thought it sounded kinda fun.”
I smiled at him. “Yeah. Sounds fun. It’ll be a hell of a drive back in the middle of the night, though.”
“Figured we could just grab a room somewhere and head back in the morning. Nothing fancy.”
I nodded and his face relaxed and he focused his attention back on the road. I put in a mix CD I found in the glove compartment, and that filled the silence all the way across the Peace Bridge, through customs, then along the QEW and all the way into Niagara Falls. There was tons of traffic and it took forever, but we made it by about ten-thirty, and there we were, at The Falls for the New Year.
We pulled up to a couple of the cheaper motels that were further from The Falls, and I zipped inside to the front desk only to be told that they were full.
“Shit,” Ennis said when I came back from the second motel.
“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just park somewhere and head over to The Falls. We can try some of the places over that way.”
“Yeah, but those cost an assload of money,” he grumbled.
“We’ll figure something out. If we have to, we can just drive home.” I was actually feeling better, being out and doing something, and where we stayed didn’t matter a whole hell of a lot to me.
We drove around until we snagged a spot in public parking somewhere, locked up the car and made our way over toward Clifton Hill and the main drag. It was cold, but at least it wasn’t snowing as we weaved our way through the people on their way down toward The Falls, and all the ones in line to get into already-packed bars and clubs.
“You wanna try to get into one of these places?” Ennis asked, nodding in the direction of one of the bars.
I looked at the line that wound out the door and around the side of the building. “Nah,” I said, shaking my head. I glanced around, and something caught my eye. “Let’s go to the casino!” I pointed up the road at the giant Casino Niagara sign and Ennis looked over that way.
“You got any money?” he asked.
“Some. C’mon, let’s at least go check it out!” He nodded and started in that direction. “Wait - let’s cut through the hotel next door. I’m freezing my ass off, and we can see if they have a room.”
He changed course and followed me across the street and in the direction of the hotel. “Right. It’s the fucking Skyline Brock, Jack! It’s the nicest one here! They probably charge you to walk through the lobby, and we can’t even afford to do that.”
I shrugged. “You never know. It can’t hurt to ask, anyway.” Ennis continued to grumble as we made our way through the main entrance to the hotel, but I barely heard him as I stared up at the huge chandelier and the marble staircase that wound its way down into the hotel lobby. “Wait here,” I said, and nodded my head in the direction of the front desk. Ennis rolled his eyes and I headed over to the desk. I waited behind a guy who was already there, and when he finished I stepped up to the desk.
“Can I help you, sir?” the woman asked pleasantly. She looked pretty close to my age, maybe a few years older, with bright blonde hair pulled up in a bun and a wide smile on her face.
“Hi,” I said, hauling out my charming self like old luggage from the basement. I leaned on the counter and plastered on the smile that always got me a blowjob from Ennis. “I came up here on a kind of spur-of-the-moment trip for the holiday, and I was wondering if there’s any chance you might have an available room.”
“Oh,” she said, her brow furrowing with thought. “I really don’t think we do. We’ve been booked for a couple months now, you know, with it being New Year’s Eve for the ‘new millennium’.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve heard that at a few places. It’s okay; I just thought I’d ask.” I smiled and stood up straight, ready to head back to Ennis, when she stopped me.
“Well, let me check, Mr. …?”
“Jack. You can call me Jack.”
“Okay, Jack. Let me have a look.”She smiled and went over to the computer and started hitting keys. “Hmm. No, it looks like… well, maybe that - no. I can try….” She spoke softly to herself, and I leaned my elbows back on the counter and waited while she did her thing. I had just about given up and was ready to tell her thanks, anyway, when she let out a surprised, “Oh!”
I raised my eyebrows. “Any luck?”
She glanced at me, then the computer, then me again. “Well, yes - maybe. I found something. We had a cancellation due to weather, but I’m not sure….”
“Do you have to hold it for them in case they come?” I asked, trying to figure out why she was hesitating.
“Oh, no. They’re not coming. It’s just that… it’s not a regular room. It’s the Fallsview Presidential Suite. Is that something you would be interested in?”
“Oh. Umm, I’m not sure. How much is it?”
“$634.22 a night.”
“Wow! Okay, uh, let me think for a second. I’m not sure.”
She nodded but before she could say anything, the desk phone rang and she went to answer it. My first instinct was to go find Ennis, who was nowhere in sight when I turned around, but then I stopped. I already knew his response would be “Are you out of your fucking mind?!” and I really didn’t want to hear that. For the first time in a long time, I felt almost good. We were out and relaxed, and it was New Year’s Eve, for fuck’s sake! I had the money for it. Truthfully, with just the first check from Mom’s insurance, I had more money than I’d ever seen in my entire life. It wasn’t just for screwing around; I knew that. But in that moment, a nice holiday out with Ennis - one where I actually didn’t feel like shit the entire time - didn’t feel like screwing around. It felt like something I needed, something I’d been missing, to make me feel human again. I turned back around just as desk girl hung up the phone. “I’ll take it.”
*****
By the time I did the whole check-in thing, it was almost eleven-thirty. Supposedly, the best seats in the house for the falls fireworks were right in the room I’d just gotten us, so I headed back through the lobby trying to locate Ennis. I found him slouched in a chair in a lounge-type area, staring blankly at a television.
“Hey,” I said from the entryway. He turned to look at me. “I got a room. Let’s go check it out.” I waved the key card, and he got up and came over to me.
“For real? How is it that all the shitty places are full and this one isn’t?”
I shrugged. “The girl said they had a cancellation, so I grabbed it. C’mon.”
We went over to the elevators and I pushed the “up” button, Ennis shooting little glances from side to side until we heard the ding and the doors opened. We got in and I pushed the button for our floor.
“Gonna miss the fireworks if we waste a bunch of time in the room,” Ennis said, picking at his thumbnail.
“I think it’ll be okay,” I said, trying not to smile.
“What?” he asked.
“Huh? Nothing,” I said.
“Why’re you smiling?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Thought that was the point of this whole trip.”
“Yeah, but -”
Before he could finish, the elevator dinged our arrival and the doors opened again.
I glanced at the sign on the wall that said which room numbers were which way, then headed off down the hall in the direction of ours with Ennis trailing behind me. I stopped in front of the last door, all the way at the end of the hall, and slid the card into the lock. One beep, and I turned the handle and stepped inside.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said as I looked around.
“What?” Ennis asked, stepping in behind me. “Holy shit! Jack, what the fuck?”
We stared at the main sitting area, which was down three steps and outfitted with huge couches, a bar area, and an entire wall of windows looking out over The Falls.
I hopped down the steps and into the center of the room. “Well, whaddaya think?” I asked with a sweeping gesture.
He stood at the top of the stairs, his mouth hanging open. “Seriously, Jack, what the hell? We can’t afford this! It’s gotta be at least -”
“It doesn’t matter, and yes, we can. I can. I already got one insurance check, and there’s another one coming, plus if I sell the house -”
“This isn’t what that money is for!” he whisper-shouted. “It’s for - You’re supposed to -”
“I’m supposed to what?” I asked, starting to get pissed off. “I never got the ‘What To Do When Your Mom Dies’ handbook, so please, enlighten me!”
He sighed, took heavy steps down the stairs and flopped down onto one of the couches. “I don’t know. This is just so… I mean, you can’t just go around doing crazy shit just because….”
I sat down next to him on the couch. “Ennis, for the past fucking month and a half, I’ve been more responsible than any twenty-year-old kid should have to be. I wanna be here, with you. I feel good right now. A few hundred bucks isn’t that big a deal in the long run. I just… wanted to do this. Let’s just… be here, okay?” He raised his eyes from the red, gold and black swirls on the oriental throw rug under the glass coffee table and looked at me, not saying anything right away. I reached out, grabbed his hand and laced our fingers together. “C’mon.”
He exhaled a long breath, and the corner of his mouth started to twitch upward a little. “Yeah,” he said with a nod, giving my hand a squeeze. “Okay.”
I let out a whoop! and jumped up from the couch. “Let’s check this place out!” I said. We spent the next 10 minutes scoping out the rest of the place: a bedroom with a Jacuzzi tub, fireplace, and more windows, a marble bathroom with double sinks and a walk-in shower, and another sitting room/dining room. The whole place was carpeted in thick, cream-colored carpet and everything was sparkling clean and looked practically brand new.
“Want a drink?” Ennis asked from behind the bar after the exploration was complete.
“Sure. Just gotta take a leak,” I said.
I headed back down the hall to the bathroom off the bedroom and did my business. I got distracted by the Jacuzzi tub on my way back, and I was contemplating filling it up right then when Ennis called, “Fireworks are starting!” I zipped back down the hall but jerked to a halt at the entrance to the main living room, a little breathless at the sight before me. All the lights were off and Ennis stood right up close to the windows, his jeans hugging his ass like it was what they were born to do, and just beyond him outside the window, huge bursts of color and light painted the sky as a new year came upon us. Two open beers sat on the table, but I ignored those for the moment and walked quietly up behind him.
“Wow,” I said just over his shoulder.
He glanced back at me and smiled. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Yeah, it is.” I took a step closer and wrapped one arm around his waist and the other across his chest. I felt him lean back against me a little, and I rested my chin on his shoulder. We stood there in silence for a while, just watching the show, until he turned his head to look back at me.
“You okay? You’re kinda quiet,” he said.
I smiled and craned my neck forward a little to kiss him. “Yeah,” I said when we broke apart. “I am.” And for the first time in a long time, I meant it.
TBC
today
yesterday