(no subject)
TITLE: As It Should Be
AUTHOR: Wild Columbine
PAIRING: Ennis/Jack
RATING: R for sexual content
FEEDBACK: Yes please
DISCLAIMERS: The characters and original story are, of course, the work of the brilliant Annie Proulx, and I just write to fill and extend that original story, while keeping to its spirit. I apologise for taking and reworking her wonderful opening line, a line that sends shivers down my spine each time I read it.
SUMMARY: Ennis reassesses his priorities after a bad dream.
NOTES: AU is not my favourite genre and I’m sure this has been tried before but here goes…
AS IT SHOULD BE
Ennis del Mar awakes from a dream.
Sheets drenched with sweat, heart smashing ribs, unseeing eyes wide with horror in the darkness. ---It was Jack! Jesus Christ, it was Jack, dead and gone, just ashes!--- Fumbles for the lamp, it hits the floor, he crashes out of bed, onto all fours, retching, shivering. Water, need a drink. No! first check the closet. Lamp still works. He stands, sweat running in rivulets, chest, belly, between his thighs, glistening arm reaching out to the door. The closet door. It opens. Just a smooth, shiny, bare surface. Everything is as it should be.
Legs quake, knees buckle, he falls, drags his body to the bed and crouches there in rough prayer. ---God, if you’re there, if you care, please don’t never let it happen, not my Jack, not my Jack--- Crawls into his little bathroom, vomits on the floor.
He is washed and dressed, the bathroom cleaned up, soap barely overcoming the stench of terror. He tells himself the nightmare was just anxiety, too much worrying about the day ahead. For the hundredth time he reads Jack’s postcard, “7th okay, Jack”. Cold, distant words, none of Jack’s usual spirit. Not enough to balance against the last five months, five months of misery for Ennis, their last goodbye playing over and over again in his head like a damn TV commercial. Jack cursing him, Jack threatening to quit, Jack telling him his loving wasn’t enough, Jack going with other men, going with other men. Jack, a queer.
---And what does that make me? Don’t know, only know one thing today, can’t live without Jack, have ta be with him no matter what, whatever that makes me, whatever they do ta me---
---But I don’t want a die, bashed and cut and tore up like some old carcass---
---But the dream, can’t never feel like that again---
The clock-radio suddenly blasts out a cheery country song and, shocked, Ennis thumps it into silence. Today he wants to be away early, he wants to get to the mountains before Jack.
“7th okay, Jack”. Nothing more.
Up at Pine Creek the horses graze but Ennis has made no attempt to set up camp. He paces along the bank and replays the dream again and again. Jack dead, it could happen, a split-second lapse of judgement, a sideways look at the wrong man wrong place wrong time, a drunk driver over the centre line, some bastard like Ennis’s own father watching him and biding his time. And then what would he do? What would his life be without Jack? Would he even know, with a thousand miles of empty space between them? The cord that stretches between them, the leash that binds them one to the other seems so fragile all of a sudden. This thing, this one true thing in his life, could be crushed and swept aside as you’d sweep an insect off a picnic table. He lights up another cigarette and imagines every crossroads, every overladen truck, every curve in the highway between himself and Childress.
After an age has passed, the growl of an engine drifts up from the valley below but many impatient minutes go by before Jack’s truck rounds the bend and skids to a halt in the dirt. Jack climbs out, stiff and awkward, the old smile growing, but slowly, reluctantly.
“Ennis! How lo--,” but his words are smothered by Ennis’s mouth, the air squashed from his chest, arms pinned, helpless in his lover’s frantic embrace. Ennis’s knuckles scrape against the truck side, joints crack under the pressure of two bodies but he daren’t let go lest Jack slip away, become part of the now-fading dream.
Finally, he pulls back, but not too far, keeps a firm grip on his man, finds the strength to speak.
“Got a surprise or two,” He feels shy and anxious, as though this man has become a stranger to him in the intervening months.
“Not beans?” Jack’s eyes betray the weariness within.
“I…I got me a few more days off. We can stay longer…that’s if you want.” Jack nods, slow, calm. “Got the cabin again too. ‘Nother hour’s drivin, though.”
A shrug. “Okay. That’s nice.”
“And…I had a dream. We gotta talk.”
“Yeah, we’re good at that.”
It takes longer than an hour to reach the old cabin because Ennis checks his rear-view every few seconds to reassure himself of Jack’s continuing presence. The cabin is as rough and homely as they remember; a few sticks of cast-off furniture, two bed-frames, a cast-iron stove, leaning water-tank; not much worse than Ennis’s own trailer. They tend to the horses, stash their gear, light the stove and put water on to boil. In silence they push the beds together, get the thin camping mattresses on, make up the bed with sleeping bags. They pause.
“I gotta piss,” says Jack. He heads outside and is gone for an eternity. Ennis waits, anxiety turning to panic and back again as he occasionally glimpses Jack walking the slopes, smoking, head down. Ennis has coffee and hot food ready when he finally returns. It’s a silent meal.
Then Ennis undresses and sits on the bed, shivering but not from the cold. “Please?”
The mellow glow of a kerosene lamp softens the lines on Jack’s beautiful face and gilds his greying hair, but can’t disguise the deep pools of pain which his eyes have become. Ennis sits in the circle of Jack’s legs, his own wrapped round Jack’s waist, a cocoon of finest Texan sleeping bag around them, a strange uncertainty between them. Close, but they have not as yet moved closer.
“We gotta talk.”
“Go ahead.” Withdrawn. Five months to think.
“I had a dream. Scared the piss outa me.”
“Hope you changed the bed.”
“Shut up, Jack. This ain’t easy. I dreamed you was dead-“
“Thanks.”
“-and I didn’t know, and then all I had left was…” ---Was shirts, Jack, our old shirts, my lost shirt down inside yours. My blood but it was you got hurt so bad. Did you really take it? Are them two shirts hangin up together somewhere, the way I dreamed? Did you love me right from the start?--- “…was nuthin. Thought I’d die from the pain.”
Jack says not a word, eyes never moving from Ennis’s face. Ennis knows this is the time; there will never be another like it. Still, it comes hard, has to fight its way through compressed layers of fear and doubt and loathing, through years of denial.
“I don’t want a lose you, bud. I don’t never want a be without you. No matter what…”
A long silence. Jack’s brow wrinkles.
“What you sayin?”
Ennis shakes, eyes closed, whispers, “Stay with me.”
“Stay? You mean…us? Like…together?”
Ennis nods, waits, heartbeat suspended. Jack’s tears begin slow but they don’t stop, his moustache soon wet against Ennis’s mouth as they lean into each other at last. Foreheads touch, noses nuzzle, they murmur, helpless beyond words. The breath of their souls passes between them.
“Ennis…god-damn, Ennis.” He’s quivering. Twenty years. Twenty damn years.
“It’s like, you was dead. Thought I’d die, Jack. I didn’t never feel so bad, like my guts had been tore out, like I was…like there was no-one, I was all alone.”
“Oh, Ennis…”
“It’s just I’m so shit-scared, Jack…”
“I know that.”
“…but I don’t never want a feel like that again.”
“It’s all right, Ennis, I’ll take care a you. You’ll be safe with me. Won’t let no-one harm you.”
“I don’t want a be queer, Jack.” He’s crying too, desperate, confused tears that only Jack’s gentle caresses can begin to soothe.
“No, no, course not, you’re okay, my darling, you’re all right.”
“And I gotta see my girls...”
“Yeah, I gotta see Bobby.”
“…but we gotta be together, always.”
“We’ll work it out somehow. Oh Jesus, Ennis, I didn’t never give up hopin…”
Slowly Ennis rolls back, takes Jack’s weight onto him, licks away his salty tears. Arms and legs encircle and cling, each fearful of ever letting the other go again. Ennis runs his hands down onto Jack’s buttocks and pulls him closer, wants to be closer than flesh will allow, wants to dissolve flesh and be soul to soul.
And as if knowing his thoughts, Jack breathes low and husky, “We are…we are…”
The fire in the stove diminishes, the room chills, but they create heat enough to sustain them throughout the night. Sixteen years slip away and again they are the fierce young lovers in the Motel Siesta.
Like two locks of hair curled together they lie, Jack asleep in the crook of Ennis’s arm, no space, no distance, no misunderstanding between them, just love-warm skin on skin. Threads of fire light Ennis’s mind, fear, longing, disgust, fulfilment, mother-love, desire, twisting in a skein around the one thought that both calms and excites him - Jack and him, together.
Jack snores, Ennis smiles.---Let him sleep, he’s so tuckered out - no, let him be with me, part of me, now, always---
He strokes Jack’s flank, the rounding belly, the still-muscled thighs, coaxes Jack to eager, awake arousal with his big gentle hands.
“Christ, Ennis, my back! Ain’t nineteen no more.”
“You just lie there, bud, I’ll do it all.”
But Jack thrusts back and takes Ennis deep inside him, moans, sighs into the night, a lifetime of pain and loneliness lost on the air. Ennis nuzzles his neck, murmurs in his ear, “I love you, Jack fuckin Twist.”
Ennis awakes from a dream. Sheets wet with sweat and semen, clinging to goose-fleshed legs. Shuddering, tear-filled breaths. Hollow echo of a beloved voice in his ears, memory of a long-gone scent, a taste of sweat and smoky saliva. No need to get up and check. No need to slow the spinning room and force it back into place. He knows. Everything is as it should be; everything is as it shouldn’t be; everything is as it will always be.
AUTHOR: Wild Columbine
PAIRING: Ennis/Jack
RATING: R for sexual content
FEEDBACK: Yes please
DISCLAIMERS: The characters and original story are, of course, the work of the brilliant Annie Proulx, and I just write to fill and extend that original story, while keeping to its spirit. I apologise for taking and reworking her wonderful opening line, a line that sends shivers down my spine each time I read it.
SUMMARY: Ennis reassesses his priorities after a bad dream.
NOTES: AU is not my favourite genre and I’m sure this has been tried before but here goes…
AS IT SHOULD BE
Ennis del Mar awakes from a dream.
Sheets drenched with sweat, heart smashing ribs, unseeing eyes wide with horror in the darkness. ---It was Jack! Jesus Christ, it was Jack, dead and gone, just ashes!--- Fumbles for the lamp, it hits the floor, he crashes out of bed, onto all fours, retching, shivering. Water, need a drink. No! first check the closet. Lamp still works. He stands, sweat running in rivulets, chest, belly, between his thighs, glistening arm reaching out to the door. The closet door. It opens. Just a smooth, shiny, bare surface. Everything is as it should be.
Legs quake, knees buckle, he falls, drags his body to the bed and crouches there in rough prayer. ---God, if you’re there, if you care, please don’t never let it happen, not my Jack, not my Jack--- Crawls into his little bathroom, vomits on the floor.
He is washed and dressed, the bathroom cleaned up, soap barely overcoming the stench of terror. He tells himself the nightmare was just anxiety, too much worrying about the day ahead. For the hundredth time he reads Jack’s postcard, “7th okay, Jack”. Cold, distant words, none of Jack’s usual spirit. Not enough to balance against the last five months, five months of misery for Ennis, their last goodbye playing over and over again in his head like a damn TV commercial. Jack cursing him, Jack threatening to quit, Jack telling him his loving wasn’t enough, Jack going with other men, going with other men. Jack, a queer.
---And what does that make me? Don’t know, only know one thing today, can’t live without Jack, have ta be with him no matter what, whatever that makes me, whatever they do ta me---
---But I don’t want a die, bashed and cut and tore up like some old carcass---
---But the dream, can’t never feel like that again---
The clock-radio suddenly blasts out a cheery country song and, shocked, Ennis thumps it into silence. Today he wants to be away early, he wants to get to the mountains before Jack.
“7th okay, Jack”. Nothing more.
Up at Pine Creek the horses graze but Ennis has made no attempt to set up camp. He paces along the bank and replays the dream again and again. Jack dead, it could happen, a split-second lapse of judgement, a sideways look at the wrong man wrong place wrong time, a drunk driver over the centre line, some bastard like Ennis’s own father watching him and biding his time. And then what would he do? What would his life be without Jack? Would he even know, with a thousand miles of empty space between them? The cord that stretches between them, the leash that binds them one to the other seems so fragile all of a sudden. This thing, this one true thing in his life, could be crushed and swept aside as you’d sweep an insect off a picnic table. He lights up another cigarette and imagines every crossroads, every overladen truck, every curve in the highway between himself and Childress.
After an age has passed, the growl of an engine drifts up from the valley below but many impatient minutes go by before Jack’s truck rounds the bend and skids to a halt in the dirt. Jack climbs out, stiff and awkward, the old smile growing, but slowly, reluctantly.
“Ennis! How lo--,” but his words are smothered by Ennis’s mouth, the air squashed from his chest, arms pinned, helpless in his lover’s frantic embrace. Ennis’s knuckles scrape against the truck side, joints crack under the pressure of two bodies but he daren’t let go lest Jack slip away, become part of the now-fading dream.
Finally, he pulls back, but not too far, keeps a firm grip on his man, finds the strength to speak.
“Got a surprise or two,” He feels shy and anxious, as though this man has become a stranger to him in the intervening months.
“Not beans?” Jack’s eyes betray the weariness within.
“I…I got me a few more days off. We can stay longer…that’s if you want.” Jack nods, slow, calm. “Got the cabin again too. ‘Nother hour’s drivin, though.”
A shrug. “Okay. That’s nice.”
“And…I had a dream. We gotta talk.”
“Yeah, we’re good at that.”
It takes longer than an hour to reach the old cabin because Ennis checks his rear-view every few seconds to reassure himself of Jack’s continuing presence. The cabin is as rough and homely as they remember; a few sticks of cast-off furniture, two bed-frames, a cast-iron stove, leaning water-tank; not much worse than Ennis’s own trailer. They tend to the horses, stash their gear, light the stove and put water on to boil. In silence they push the beds together, get the thin camping mattresses on, make up the bed with sleeping bags. They pause.
“I gotta piss,” says Jack. He heads outside and is gone for an eternity. Ennis waits, anxiety turning to panic and back again as he occasionally glimpses Jack walking the slopes, smoking, head down. Ennis has coffee and hot food ready when he finally returns. It’s a silent meal.
Then Ennis undresses and sits on the bed, shivering but not from the cold. “Please?”
The mellow glow of a kerosene lamp softens the lines on Jack’s beautiful face and gilds his greying hair, but can’t disguise the deep pools of pain which his eyes have become. Ennis sits in the circle of Jack’s legs, his own wrapped round Jack’s waist, a cocoon of finest Texan sleeping bag around them, a strange uncertainty between them. Close, but they have not as yet moved closer.
“We gotta talk.”
“Go ahead.” Withdrawn. Five months to think.
“I had a dream. Scared the piss outa me.”
“Hope you changed the bed.”
“Shut up, Jack. This ain’t easy. I dreamed you was dead-“
“Thanks.”
“-and I didn’t know, and then all I had left was…” ---Was shirts, Jack, our old shirts, my lost shirt down inside yours. My blood but it was you got hurt so bad. Did you really take it? Are them two shirts hangin up together somewhere, the way I dreamed? Did you love me right from the start?--- “…was nuthin. Thought I’d die from the pain.”
Jack says not a word, eyes never moving from Ennis’s face. Ennis knows this is the time; there will never be another like it. Still, it comes hard, has to fight its way through compressed layers of fear and doubt and loathing, through years of denial.
“I don’t want a lose you, bud. I don’t never want a be without you. No matter what…”
A long silence. Jack’s brow wrinkles.
“What you sayin?”
Ennis shakes, eyes closed, whispers, “Stay with me.”
“Stay? You mean…us? Like…together?”
Ennis nods, waits, heartbeat suspended. Jack’s tears begin slow but they don’t stop, his moustache soon wet against Ennis’s mouth as they lean into each other at last. Foreheads touch, noses nuzzle, they murmur, helpless beyond words. The breath of their souls passes between them.
“Ennis…god-damn, Ennis.” He’s quivering. Twenty years. Twenty damn years.
“It’s like, you was dead. Thought I’d die, Jack. I didn’t never feel so bad, like my guts had been tore out, like I was…like there was no-one, I was all alone.”
“Oh, Ennis…”
“It’s just I’m so shit-scared, Jack…”
“I know that.”
“…but I don’t never want a feel like that again.”
“It’s all right, Ennis, I’ll take care a you. You’ll be safe with me. Won’t let no-one harm you.”
“I don’t want a be queer, Jack.” He’s crying too, desperate, confused tears that only Jack’s gentle caresses can begin to soothe.
“No, no, course not, you’re okay, my darling, you’re all right.”
“And I gotta see my girls...”
“Yeah, I gotta see Bobby.”
“…but we gotta be together, always.”
“We’ll work it out somehow. Oh Jesus, Ennis, I didn’t never give up hopin…”
Slowly Ennis rolls back, takes Jack’s weight onto him, licks away his salty tears. Arms and legs encircle and cling, each fearful of ever letting the other go again. Ennis runs his hands down onto Jack’s buttocks and pulls him closer, wants to be closer than flesh will allow, wants to dissolve flesh and be soul to soul.
And as if knowing his thoughts, Jack breathes low and husky, “We are…we are…”
The fire in the stove diminishes, the room chills, but they create heat enough to sustain them throughout the night. Sixteen years slip away and again they are the fierce young lovers in the Motel Siesta.
Like two locks of hair curled together they lie, Jack asleep in the crook of Ennis’s arm, no space, no distance, no misunderstanding between them, just love-warm skin on skin. Threads of fire light Ennis’s mind, fear, longing, disgust, fulfilment, mother-love, desire, twisting in a skein around the one thought that both calms and excites him - Jack and him, together.
Jack snores, Ennis smiles.---Let him sleep, he’s so tuckered out - no, let him be with me, part of me, now, always---
He strokes Jack’s flank, the rounding belly, the still-muscled thighs, coaxes Jack to eager, awake arousal with his big gentle hands.
“Christ, Ennis, my back! Ain’t nineteen no more.”
“You just lie there, bud, I’ll do it all.”
But Jack thrusts back and takes Ennis deep inside him, moans, sighs into the night, a lifetime of pain and loneliness lost on the air. Ennis nuzzles his neck, murmurs in his ear, “I love you, Jack fuckin Twist.”
Ennis awakes from a dream. Sheets wet with sweat and semen, clinging to goose-fleshed legs. Shuddering, tear-filled breaths. Hollow echo of a beloved voice in his ears, memory of a long-gone scent, a taste of sweat and smoky saliva. No need to get up and check. No need to slow the spinning room and force it back into place. He knows. Everything is as it should be; everything is as it shouldn’t be; everything is as it will always be.