Going Left Around the World: Chapter 60
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: I’m not sure if I’m getting any quicker about posting, but I assure you I am writing! Thank you as always to Judy for her beta work. Also, a very special thank-you to shieldmaid1 for her work as guest beta/giver-of-feedback.
And thanks most of all to those of you who are hanging in with this story - we’re getting to the tough stuff for these guys (like there hasn’t been enough, right?).
Happy reading….
jill
Chapter 60
One night between Thanksgiving and Christmas my phone rang in the middle of the night. I had the automatic reaction most everyone has to a phone ringing at two o’clock in the morning: a horrible jumping-out-of-your-skin twenty seconds of wondering who the fuck died.
Once I grabbed my phone and saw the call was from Ennis, I felt safe in assuming he was alive. But no way was it normal for him to call at that hour, not even on a weekend.
“Hello?” I said, trying to sound awake but calm.
“Hey!” he shouted into the phone.
I could hear music and what sounded like about a thousand voices in the background. “Hey, Ennis. What’s up?”
He laughed a goofy, un-Ennis-like laugh. “What’s up? C’mon, Jack! You mean I have to have a reason to call you?”
“No,” I said with an uneasy laugh. “It’s two in the morning though. Where the hell are you?”
“Two in the morning?” he yelled. “Aww, we been up together a lot later than that!”
“What the hell, Ennis? Where are you? Answer me.” I wasn’t sure where the conversation was headed, but my gut told me to nip it in the bud.
“Where am I?” he repeated, followed by more insane laughter. “I’m here and you’re there. That’s where I am!”
“Are you at a party?” I asked in a kindergarten-teacher voice.
“Umm….” His voice faded away like he moved the phone away from his mouth. “Some house - yeah, it’s a party! Like five hundred people!”
Five hundred people who I sincerely hoped were ignoring him or were equally wrecked so they weren’t likely to remember much. I was intimately familiar with drunk Ennis: he could get mean, sulky, horny. But never in my life had I seen him drunk-dial anyone and then giggle and scream into the phone. That was my first clue maybe he wasn’t just drunk.
“Okay. Do you have a ride home?” I asked.
“Ride? I’ll tell you what I wanna ride -”
“Ennis!” I shouted back. “Shut the fuck up! What are you on, man?”
More laughter. “Shit, I got no fucking clue! But I wanted to talk to you!” Giggles, snorts. “Oh, my god, that fucking rhymed!”
Fantastic. Because he was such a sports fiend in high school and college, he’d never done much more than drink, and he didn’t go overboard with it often. I guessed that whatever he’d taken or smoked or whatever was hitting him doubly hard.
“Ennis, listen to me - I want you to find whoever you came with and tell them it’s time to go home, all right? Or find someone not wasted to call you a cab.”
He dialed his voice down a notch and his voice got husky. “But if I came with someone else, then what about you?” he asked.
I was no longer sure what we were talking about and I did not want clarification while he was in that state.
“I’m going back to bed. That’s what I’m going to do,” I said, a death-grip on my phone.
“Mmm. Know what I would do if I was in the bed?” he slurred.
“No, I don’t. And if you don’t shut the fuck up, everyone in a hundred yard radius is going to know and I promise you don’t want that. I’m going to sleep. Get yourself home in one fucking piece, please. Good night.”
Before I clicked off the call I heard a high-pitched yowl of “I love you, Jackie!” I disconnected and flopped back down in the bed. At least he’d said Jackie at the end, so he had a good shot that anyone around would think he was talking to a chick. But let me tell you: Jackie didn’t sleep a fucking wink that night.
I waited until about noon on Saturday to call him, figuring he should at least be able to pick up a phone by then. He picked up, but his greeting was just a grunt.
“Ennis? You okay?”
Another grunt.
“Where are you? Are you back at your place?”
“Hmm. Nathan’s.” I heard some rustling that sounded like movement. “Floor.”
On the floor at Nathan’s. Well, at least he’d made it back from wherever he was. I’d been to Nathan’s and I was pretty sure that’s not where he called me from the night before.
“Okay. Gimme a call later, all right? When you get home.”
“Jesus, fuck my head hurts,” he groaned.
“Go home, drink water and sleep it off,” I ordered.
“Mmm. ‘Kay. Later.” Click.
Josh called me later that day and invited me over to play poker with some of his friends and I accepted without a thought. Anything that got me away from thinking about all the “what-ifs” of Ennis and the night before was a winner. It was fun, too, until my phone rang around nine-thirty. I glanced at the caller ID.
“I have to take this,” I said.
I’d filled Josh in on last night’s phone call so he nodded and said, “Use my room.”
I slipped into Josh’s bedroom and closed the door as I pushed the button to take the call.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” At least Ennis sounded like his real self this time.
“You feeling better?”
He sighed. “Yeah, I’m okay. Was rough for a while though.”
“I can imagine,” I said, sarcasm seeping into my tone.
“Yeah. Uh, sorry about all that,” he mumbled.
“About what, exactly? Calling me at two in the morning completely trashed? Or screaming about what you wanted to do in our bed in the middle of your party or wherever the fuck you were? Or that I stayed up all night hoping you didn’t die before you got home?”
“Jesus,” he whispered. “All of it.”
“What the fuck were you on? I know what you’re like drunk and that was not just drunk!”
“I don’t know! Jesus Christ.”
“You don’t know what you took? You’re seriously telling me you don’t know what you took?”
“Jack, c’mon. I just…I felt like shit last night. I missed you and I was out and Nathan and those guys were passing a joint, so I…. And then someone at the party gave me some kind of pill. I think it was X.”
“You think it was X? I can’t even believe I’m fucking hearing this.”
“Jesus, Jack! It was one time! I felt like shit and I just wanted to forget about it.”
“Well excuse the fuck outta me for being surprised that you’re on a first-name basis with street drugs!” I whisper-yelled, hoping the guys in the other room couldn’t hear me.
“I’m not,” Ennis ground out. “Like I said, it was one time.”
“It fucking better be if you want to hang on to your precious scholarship and not out yourself to everyone you know!”
“Shit. I know. I said I was sorry.” He was silent for a few beats. “Did I really out myself?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure I shut you up before you said anything too incriminating. God knows, that’s certainly the worst thing that could’ve happened last night,” I added, now one-hundred percent sarcasm.
“Jesus! You know I can’t -”
“Actually, Ennis,” I said, cutting him off, “what I can’t do is have this conversation right now. I’m busy so I’ll call you later or tomorrow.”
“What are you doing?” he asked. “You’re just trying to get back at me for last night, right?”
“No, I’m not. I’m at Josh’s and I have to go now. We’ll talk later.”
I heard him call my name as I pulled the phone away from my ear to hang up. He called right back but I let it go to voicemail. It was petty, I know, but it made me feel better. Josh was about the worst thing I had to hurt Ennis with so I twisted the knife and left it there. I wondered how much sleep he’d get that night.
We didn’t talk for most of a week, and even though it bugged me and left me lonely as hell, I forced myself not to pick up the phone. I realize Ennis was a grown man at that point, at least technically, and he could smoke, snort or mainline whatever he wanted. But the fact that he might be doing any of those things scared the shit out of me because it meant I could lose him - to the traditional OD or, even worse, to him outing himself one way or another while under the influence. He was not okay with his gay and I worried that, if it ever saw the light of day, he’d bail and I might never see him again. Or, on the flip side of the coin, he could meet some smoking hot city guy far away from his parents and everyone who knew the old Ennis, and just go for it. Either way, color me screwed.
He finally called me toward the end of the week and, while I was a little pissy with him to start out, we ended up doing our usual don’t-talk-about-it and make up. Almost.
“So I’ll be home in about two weeks. A little less,” he said.
“Yeah. It actually went by kind of fast this time.”
“So, it’s too soon? I can hang out down here longer if you want -”
“Fuck you,” I said, laughing. “Get your ass back here ASAP.”
“Okay. And listen…I’m sorry about everything. The past week…all of it. It was stupid.”
“It was stupid. But it’s all right, I’ll live. Just don’t do it again.”
“I won’t. Promise.”
We hung up and I felt pretty good. If only that was a promise he’d kept.
Just shy of two weeks later, I sat sprawled on the couch watching crap TV and I saw headlights swing past the front window. I listened for the car door slam and the turn of a key in the lock, my grin getting bigger by the second. The front door swished open and shut, and a bag hit the floor. I stood up and he stepped around the corner and into the living room.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” He made a beeline straight for me, lifting his hands to my head - like I might try to get away - and attacked my mouth. I gave it right back to him until I had to come up for air.
“Whoa,” I said, pulling back for a second. “Miss me?”
“Mmm,” was all I got and he was back on me, grinding his hard cock into my thigh. “You have no idea.”
“I think I do,” I whispered and pushed him toward the couch. He hit the cushions and I leaned into him while we grabbed at buttons and zippers. He kicked his jeans and shorts off and let me fall between his legs, though I didn’t need the cue to know what he wanted.
I fished around under a cushion for the stashed lube, but I was out of practice and couldn’t put my hand right on it. His hand, meanwhile, was on me and on the verge of cutting his welcome home party short.
“Jesus, hang on,” I said, putting my hand on his to slow him down. “I’m going to come before I can even find the lube!”
“Don’t need it,” he grumbled and pulled me back to him with his legs. “Just do it.”
“Ennis,” I mumbled against his lips, “that’s going to fucking hurt. It’s been a while.”
“I don’t care,” he murmured against my ear. Then he pulled back and looked me right in the eyes. “Just fuck me.”
Well, all comfort-related courtesy went out the window at that. I mean, come on, I was still a horny guy whose long-absent boyfriend had just walked through the door. I did the best I could with what nature gave us and nailed him into the couch.
When we were done - which wasn’t long - he wrapped his arms around me and pulled us sideways so we were lying down.
“Jesus,” I said as I kicked my pants the rest of the way off.
“Yeah,” he said and buried his nose in my hair, breathing deep.
We stayed quiet for a bit and then I asked him, “So, what’s the plan?”
“Do that at least twice a day for as long as I’m here,” he said.
I pinched his sides and he squirmed. “Done. I meant for the holidays, asshole.” He rattled off Christmas Eve and Christmas day with his parents, with the goal of getting back to our own place as soon as possible. “Okay. But don’t you think your folks are going to want to see you for more than two days?”
“Yeah. I can drive down once or twice after the New Year, have dinner with them.”
“Works for me.” I shifted on the cramped couch. “How about we move this to the bedroom?”
“Sounds good.” He climbed over me and pulled me up off the couch as he stood. He paused and stared at me for a second.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re like a skeleton, that’s what. How much do you even weigh?” he asked, eyebrows furrowed.
I shrugged. “Enough.”
He shook his head. “Not near enough,” he said, running a hand under my shirt and letting his thumb bump over my ribs. “Less than at Thanksgiving.”
He wasn’t wrong. Since I’d taken a step back from Josh, keeping him squarely in the friend zone after I visited Ennis in NYC, I’d lost a lot of my dinners out, pizza and movie nights…the stuff we used to do that eventually ended up with us kissing in the foyer. So, yeah, I hadn’t eaten as much or as often but whatever.
“Hey, I can keep myself fully clothed as long as you’re here so you don’t have to look at my bony ass,” I said with a shove to his shoulder. “Haul out some turtlenecks.”
He shook his head and pulled me to him. “I’m serious. I’m worried. Maybe you should go to the doctor or something.”
“I’m fine,” I said and kissed him softly. “But I’ll go if it’ll make you feel better.”
He nodded and we headed for the bedroom. I never did make it to the doctor; it turned out having Ennis around 24/7 was just what I needed to bring back my appetite.
We did the Christmas thing with his parents - and stayed in separate bedrooms which fucking sucked - and got ourselves back home as soon as we could. They practically begged us to come to the New Year’s Eve party they were having but Ennis told them we’d already made plans to hang out with some people from school who were back in town. They didn’t like it but didn’t argue either, and Ennis threw them a bone by offering to come down for dinner after the holiday.
“So, who are these people we’re hanging out with on New Year’s Eve?” I asked as we drove home Christmas night.
“Huh? No one,” he said. My mouth fell open. “What?
“Damn! Your lying skills have improved times a thousand! Even I thought I was going to a party.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. But I really didn’t want to be stuck at that party.”
I nodded. “Works for me.”
We fell into a routine fast and furious once we got back to our place. We stuck to our twice-a-day sex rule pretty closely, and we spent almost no time apart. Weirdly enough, that was Ennis’s doing, not mine. Not that I minded, but he was just always there, sitting by me, kissing me, holding onto me like some kind of life preserver. I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that all the closeness and togetherness was going to make it suck that much harder when he had to go back, but I ignored it as best I could. It was all peace and harmony until about two weeks in.
I decided to suck it up and get going with laundry duty since we’d only done a couple loads of bare essentials since he’d been back. On my second pass through the bedroom with the laundry basket, I spotted the bag he’d brought in that first night with some clothes spilling out of it. I didn’t remember seeing him wear any of them and one quick whiff told me they were definitely dirty. I yanked out a few T-shirts, a sweatshirt, and dug a little deeper for a pair of jeans at the bottom.
I did the standard shake-out/pocket check and my hand brushed something crinkly in the front pocket. I pulled it out and just stared for I don’t know how long, not quite believing what I saw. A plastic bag with a joint along with a handful of blue, pink and green pills with weird symbols and smiley faces on them. I dropped the jeans and sank onto the edge of the bed, still staring at the bag. I must have been gone for a bit because Ennis came tromping down the hall and into the room.
“Jack? What the hell? I thought you were just -”
I looked up at him, unable to say anything.
He dropped his head to his chest. “Dammit,” he muttered. He approached the bed and lowered himself down next to me. “Meant to dump that shit.”
I found my voice. “Why the fuck do you have it in the first place?”
He sighed. “I don’t know. I got it from one of the guys - Brandon. Can’t remember if you met him or not.”
I drew back at that. “I don’t give a shit if I met him! Why the fuck would you take this from him? Why not say ‘No, thanks, pass the beer!’ What the - are you doing this shit regularly now? Are you doing it here?”
He lifted a hand to my face and shook his head. “No! No, never. Not here.”
I swatted him away. “Not here. Well, thank fucking god it’s just there then!”
“Jack, please,” he said, resting a hand on my knee, “let me try to explain.”
I dropped the bag in his lap. “Have at it.”
He drew in a deep breath. “Okay. Well, it’s only been a few times. And it’s just…everything’s so intense there. It’s this huge city I barely know, and the work and the classes….”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said, cutting him off. “You got a fucking full scholarship to that place by working your ass off here while playing every sport on the planet, so don’t even tell me that the workload is freaking you out.”
“It’s different! You know it - you’re in grad school. And I have to keep up or I lose my fucking scholarship.”
“And this helps you keep up?” I was pissed but I was also really trying to understand what was going on with him.
“No. Just unwind, I guess. Forget.”
“Forget that you have work?”
“No! It’s not that simple.”
“Then explain it to me, huh? Forget what? What the fuck do you need to forget so bad that I find this shit in your pocket?”
“You!” he roared and stood up.
I stared at him, quiet for a few seconds while I tried to get a handle on my emotions. “Me?” I choked out. “You’re popping pills because you want to forget me?”
“Not like that,” he said and knelt down in front of me. “To forget that I’m not with you. That I’m there and you’re here. That it feels like I’m two totally different people.”
“You mean one who has a boyfriend and one who doesn’t?” I asked, staring down at his hands clutching mine.
He sighed. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just miss you - like, how we’ve been since I got home - and I can’t have that no matter how much I want it. It’s hard. So much harder than I thought. And those,” he gestured at the bag on the bed, “just make it easier for me to escape it. Get out of my own head, I guess.”
I listened to what he said and god knew I understood the feeling he was talking about. But I still wasn’t sold. “You know,” I said quietly, “I know what that feels like too. Because sometimes I have this guy who’s…amazing. And I know he loves me more than anything. But the rest of the time, he’s just not there. And not only because he’s away. In front of his friends, our friends, his parents…not there. Not by my side, like I want.”
He rested his forehead on my lap and I let him stay for a few seconds. “But you know what? You don’t see me swallowing anything so I can ‘escape’. So I don’t have to deal with my dead mom or who I am or the choices I made.” I pushed him off me and stood up. “Get the fuck over yourself.”
I walked out of the bedroom, down the hall and out the front door with just enough presence of mind to grab my jacket on the way. I got in my car and drove and, for the first time since Ennis got home, we were apart.
TBC
today
yesterday