(no subject)

[e_delmar]

There's somethin' about the air, or the noise, or something, and Ennis can't sleep. Or maybe it's all that coughing that's keeping him up. Damn shoulder's been acting up, shouldn't've pushed so hard on the damn stables. Jack may be young and nimble, but Ennis' as old as he ever was. Older, maybe, given his time spent here. Fucking Milliways. The bed creaks as he turns and picks up a cigarette from the bedside table and lights it.

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[jack_f_twist]

Over on the other side of the bed, Jack shifts lazily, dark hair falling into his face, and yawns, his own cigarette long gone. One arm lies haphazardly across his chest, loose and rising and falling with his even breath. Troubled sleep the night before and hard work all this morning makes for a bonedeep weariness now, and he hadn't barely finished his cigarette before he was drifting off.

[e_delmar]

Ennis leans back -- against the wall, against Jack -- and closes his eyes as he takes a drag off his cigarette. Out in the wild, the silence is like a friend, but more and more often, the late nights drag on and the dark and silence creep in, tryin' to smother Ennis.

He shifts, feeling Jack's chest rise and fall under his arm and feels guilty for a minute at the fact that he's hiding out here when he should be home, living his life. And when he says something of the sort out loud, it don't seem quite so big.

[jack_f_twist]

Yeah, he'd dozed off. Barely any sleep the night before, hard work for the last week and this latest romp here in the room had tired Jack out but good, and he'd sure slipped straight down into some damn uneasy dreams, but Ennis' voice, his touch, gets to him more than any dreams ever have and he listens without opening his eyes, wondering if maybe this weren't some part of the dream after all, because that's sure as hell the only time Ennis' ever start talking like this, like there's nothin to lose anymore.

[e_delmar]

Maybe there ain't nothin' to lose anymore, because back home he sure's hell ain't got nothin' but Junior. Junior and that fucking flowered blanket on his bed. Ennis finishes up his cigarette and rolls to the side, wrapping an arm lazily around Jack and talks about Junior, Junior and that husband o' hers and what he'll ever do if he ends up having grandbabies.

[jack_f_twist]

Jack listens.

It never occurs to him not to, just like it never occurs to him to pull himself out of that deep drowsiness that's got him so loose and lazy, and he doesn't even say anything, just listens to the low rough grumble of Ennis' voice, and it's so goddam rare to hear that he just lies there, lets it wrap around him like Ennis' arm, warm and possessive.

[e_delmar]

Ennis coughs some more, and then he talks some more. About the dark, and the coyotes that ain't here, but at home. And when he has trouble breathing, he worries a bit.


It's easier to worry when there ain't already people worryin' all over you.

























And then he can breathe again, and the darkness is a little darker and the silence is a little louder, and his grip on Jack gets a little tighter as his words move to them.

[jack_f_twist]

Shit.

Deep in the dark, blue eyes open into the pillow and now he's listening with every bone and muscle and vein in his body, but he can't move now, if he does, no two ways about it, Ennis'll--

First he'll shut up. And then, he won't talk again.

So he stays silent, tries to will his heart to stay steady and not speed up, and lying like this, Ennis curled into him, he thinks about one cold night when he'd reached back and found that warmth there, and tries not to think about what it'd be like to never feel that again.

[e_delmar]

He coughs more, here, in the dark, where there's nobody to hear him, nobody to give him them funny looks. And his words follow Jack's thoughts --

"Shit."

But it stops, it always stops. And then his hand digs in a little, not too hard, not enough to shake him, not enough to wake him. And then he starts again, with

"Fuckin' Aguire" and "Stupid son of a bitch move" like he's back there with Jack, goin' through all of it again.

[jack_f_twist]

(said bring 'em down)

It's like every time Ennis coughs, something in Jack's own lungs stops working in sympathy. The silence he's bound himself too rings in his ears and more than anything else, that squeeze of Ennis' hand makes him just want to turn around and--

He can't.

So he listens instead.

[e_delmar]

And four years pass by so much faster in the darkness of a room then they do when you're actually livin' them. Ennis is on the verge of sleep himself, and if he closes his eyes hard enough and smells long enough, he can think of them back in that shit hole of a motel room, tryin' to talk this shit out.

"Took me about a year a figure out it was that I shouldn't a let you out a my sights. Couldn't'a known I'd'a been stupid enough to let myself get all in love with a fuckin' rodeo hand like you."

[jack_f_twist]

For a second, he think he's still dreaming, or worse, he's still on the side of that road and this is the last thing he's ever gonna know before the dark comes in for real and it ain't even true, 'cause Ennis--

Ennis wouldn't never--

His chest has gone all tight and funny and he squeezes his eyes shut against a sudden sting, tries to hear it all over again.

And suddenly, the dark don't seem so heavy as it had just a second ago.

[e_delmar]

Ennis . . .


Ennis coughs, and he moves again and grabs himself. And he's sayin' something about Junior and a fishing trip, but that tired must be gettin' to him more'n he realizes, because he repeats himself three times --

"That damn truck, 'n Junior out back, tryin' to push"

-- with a wheezy laugh under it all, and when he yawns, it's easy to turn into Jack again, arms and legs tangled.

[jack_f_twist]

Easy for him, and it gives Jack a chance to move, just to shift as he would in his sleep, closer to Ennis' warmth. And maybe he's relieved that the talking seems to be done, and maybe not--hard to say when he can't even admit having heard.

[e_delmar]

Ennis yawns again, and in the morning, he'll have to go. In the morning, the world'll be crowding in on him, and that dark that's there even when it ain't night will be back.

But the darkness is pushed back now, for a little while anyway, and it don't seem so bad when he breathes in Jack, and it don't seem so bad as he rests his head in the crook of Jack's shoulder, and it don't seem so bad as his breathing evens out and he falls asleep.

[jack_f_twist]

He sleeps, and Jack's eyes open into the dark of the room, and he rolls over carefully, wrapping an arm around Ennis' shoulders and the other over his stomach, slips a leg between Ennis' and lies there watching the empty air for a long time.

And when he presses a kiss to Ennis' hair and yawns, and his eyes slip closed again, he sleeps deep and content, and instead of dreaming of Brokeback, dreams of nothing at all.