So Damned Happy

2006-05-18T10:01:36Z

TITLE:So damned happy

FANDOM: Brokeback Mountain
SUMMARY: My take on Ennis and Jack’s reunion in Riverton, four years after the summer of Brokeback Mountain. Strong sexual content (double lemon) mixed with a heavy dose of embarrassingly sentimental fluff.
Length: Medium - 6,800 words
RATING: NC-17

STAGE: COMPLETE.

Author comments

Personally, I'm not overly thrilled with how this story came out in the end. I toyed around with a few versions of it before settling down for this one in the end, and I'm almost happy with the end result compared to the alternatives I had at first. I don't like the fact the writing comes out sounding stiff for my liking at times, and I can't write good dialogue for shit, but the characterization is all right for the most part even though I wish I knew how to be less melodramatic when it comes to the root of it. What I do like about it, however, is that it doesn't swim in sorrow. It has a happy ring to it, a note of hope that hopefully says to the reader all's not so bad. Life's not always a bitch dressed in black, and Jack and Ennis's story, though ultimately tragic, had its brilliant moments of utter euphoria.

So damned happy

As the wheels of Jack’s pickup truck turned over the fine gravel outside Ennis’s house, the two men inside it couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear. Whilst Jack split his attention between driving the truck out of the main street and stealing furtive glances at the man on the passenger seat, Ennis mostly looked out of the half-wound down window, a smile constantly playing on his lips.

“Jack fuckin’ Twist,” Ennis said, shaking his head. “Damned Jack fuckin’ Twist,” he punctuated slowly, taking his time with each word, as though he’d given them some profound thought and consideration. As they passed the last house on the main street, Ennis looked into the side mirror, searching for familiar faces. For once, the butterflies fluttering in his stomach were stronger than the perennial sense of paranoia he carried around inside him; so much so he kept forgetting to tone down his excitement in front of would-be watching neighbors. From the moment he’d seen Jack get off his pickup truck, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from looking like he’d just struck gold, eyes alive and glinting.

He lit up a smoke and brought his right hand up to touch his lips with two fingertips, feeling as though he’d just tasted something delicious and he was wanting to extract the last few traces of flavor. It wasn’t the taste of his cigarette that lingered in him, however. It was Jack’s. The ghost sensation of Jack’s lips still danced upon his own, even though almost a quarter hour had passed since Ennis’s overcome greeting outside his house. It was the taste he hadn’t forgotten for a single day in all this time; the one he’d missed so damn much that to this day he sometimes awoke in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and panting, mouth ajar against his pillow in search of a warm taste and sensation he’d only experienced one summer, back when he was carefree, more days ago than he could possibly count without going crazy.

“What do you say, ol’ friend? Wanna grab ourselves a little beer, or sumthin’? I saw a little bar some ways out in the highway when I was drivin’ to your place. Looked quiet enough, you know. Perfect for a good, ol' friendly talk.” Jack tapped the wheel with one hand, whilst he rubbed the other against the worn fabric of his jeans, just over his knee. There, he felt a hot spot, right where Ennis’s knee had touched him briefly earlier. He had to look at Ennis to see him nod as way of answer.

“It was a pretty long drive from Texas, let me tell you. Drove for over fourteen hours and almost fell asleep twice on the damned wheel. At one point the pickup wallered all over the place and almost drove itself into a side ditch. But, hell, you know me. I was as scared as a cat at the dog pound but before I could finish yelpin’ out the first curse that came to mind, I managed to bring this son of a bitch under control.” Jack tapped the wheel again. “I made the damn trip in one stretch as planned. And in one piece, too, as you can see. It wasn’t so hard for me, really, drivin’ for fourteen hours I mean. Cos’ I don’t sleep so much no more.” Jack shrugged his shoulders. “Haven’t for a while.”

A quiet “Mmh” was all Ennis mustered in reply to Jack’s colorful tale.

“So, how you doin’?”

“All right, yeah. Doin’ all right, I guess. You?”

Jack nodded as well. “All right, yeah,” he said, and for another long minute he just kept driving, eyes focused on the winding road ahead. “Although if I have to be completely honest wich you,” he added suddenly, showing his unmistakable wide grin full of teeth, “Right now I’m feeling better than ever, my friend. Better than fuckin’ ever, I say,” Jack finished, with a hard tap to the dashboard.

“Better than fuckin’ ever, huh?”

“I swear it in my momma’s name. Thing is, friend, if I felt any better, I'd drop my harp plumb through the cloud.”

Out of the blue, Ennis remembered something they used to say to each other. It was a sort of private joke they couldn’t remember inventing – a conversation made up entirely of three lines they threw at each other, which always went the same way, no matter who started it. Half-wondering, half-hoping Jack would remember it, he started it, “That a fact?”

At the words Jack smiled like the lonely kid in the playground who’d just been offered to join in a game. He took a little time in replying, but the words Ennis had been waiting to hear finally came out, loud and glorious through Jack’s lips, “You bet yer sorry ass it is.”

Ennis smiled in much the same way Jack had, and finished with the third line, “Sum fact that.”

After the little private joke, however, they felt a little pang of relief mixed with pain; relief because they both remembered and pain because, even though spoken with genuine merriment, the joke wasn’t the same. The words seemed misplaced, a little distant, as though they echoed in a different time. For a moment they felt uncomfortable, anxious even. In the back of their minds a little voice wondered if after four years spent apart they would have new things to say to each other rather than just old, tired phrases. They didn’t dwell on the idea for long, however, because old phrases or not, they were only too glad to be in each other’s sights once more; the rest would sort itself out in time.

Ennis asked Jack to stop in a shop just on the edge of Riverton, where he bought a little bottle of whiskey. With a conspiratorial grin and perky eyes that said more than any exchange of words could possibly have, Ennis passed the bottle of whiskey to Jack, who drank a great big swig of it. Ennis lit up another cigarette. The sun was setting down in the west, lighting up half the sky with an intense orange hue and casting half a shade over a sign in the highway. The sign informed there were 176 miles left to reach the town of Lander, 6 to the next gas station and 9 to a road Motel. Next to the official sign, a hand-scrawled wooden post had been buried in the sandy terrain. The post read,

Mich’s Bar
Friendly service
Good whiskey
Drive 2 miles and turn
left on the slip road

Jack reached a hand out and placed it tentatively on Ennis’s shoulder. His heart galloped in his rib cage like a young stallion, and for a moment he remembered that brisk mare he used to ride in Brokeback. Fact was, of course, everything these days reminded him of Brokeback, no matter how trivial or irrelevant.

At Jack’s touch, Ennis let out a sigh that was a little shaky and smoky.

“You know, we could always—”

“’s all right, Jack. Just drive ‘n.” Ennis interrupted him. “Keep drivin’ the damn truck for 9 miles and shut up.”

With a meaningful smile and a hard squeeze to Ennis’s shoulder, Jack obliged happily.

As soon as they were through the door of the motel’s hired room, their inhibitions were tossed aside like a useless piece of scrap no longer needed. Ennis jumped on Jack like a wild animal, shoving him against the door before he’d even had the time to lock it. With a jingle and a thud against the wooden planks of the floor, the keys fell from Jack’s grasp. A moment later their hats followed.

Jack’s hands grabbed at the wall and door behind him, keeping him from loosing balance when his knees buckled underneath him. Ennis, more desperately than he’d done a while ago, grabbed Jack’s face right over the ears and pulled him hard towards his mouth. He pushed his tongue past Jack’s parted lips and swirled it, whiskey laced puffs coming out through his nose. The kiss was desperate, born in the kind of longing only great lengths of time and heartache can make a person experience, and they weren’t worried about the time apart any more. What they were doing, or rather, what they were about to do, was something they’d both dreamed of having a chance to repeat for the last four years.

Ennis pushed his groin against Jack – hard and hot as it only got when it concerned the one person who deprived him of all reason – and the door made a creaking noise in protest. Moaning, Jack pushed back with his whole body, hard enough to overcome Ennis’s strength and drive them both stumbling away from the door noisily.

Blue-grey shadows of early evening bathed the room and the few pieces of old, creaky furniture around them. In the dark, Ennis tripped over his own steps, lost his balance and fell hard on his ass. The back of his head banged against the bottom panel of the bed, but he didn’t care about the brief pain on his skull one little bit. Ennis lied on the floor and rejoiced in the old feeling of Jack’s body pushing him down hard atop him, his bones digging carelessly into him in places. Their hands were clenched under each other’s jackets, twisting the shirts underneath them as hard and tight as if they were trying to hold onto the reins of a horse not yet tamed. So fierce was the need to feel each other close, to kiss each other until they could hardly breathe, that they couldn’t make it off the floor and into the bed before their groins were frantically rubbing together again, creating a hot friction through their jeans. Their hopeless moans filled the darkening room, its walls holding between them the intense and secret desire that existed between the two men; the desire that had lain dormant for the past four years, though not dead, like the smouldering coals of a fire you can’t quite extinguish.

They licked and kissed at each other’s mouths, feeling the maddening heat that only run through their veins when they were together. Their preamble to sex was short, raw and full of want and desperation, just like it’d been between them that first time on Brokeback, only this time they were brave enough to kiss. What was also different from then was this time there were no great amounts of alcohol to blame for their actions, and no shame in their eyes when their bodies sought one another, everywhere and all over, without ever flinching at the closeness.

Ennis rolled off his back and onto Jack. After kissing him hard again, Ennis kneeled over him and pulled him by the shirt until Jack’s upper body was rising to meet him in a sitting position on the floor. He managed to drag them forward by pushing with his knees in the direction of the bed panel behind Jack. When Jack’s back was pressed against it, they wriggled and stretched until Ennis was sitting on Jack’s lap, pressing excited groin to excited groin.

Clawing his way around blindly, Ennis searched the front of Jack’s mightily wrinkled shirt. When he found he couldn’t undo the buttons fast enough, he pulled the shirt sideways and tore half of them off, sending them flying and falling through the air like a hailstorm of plastic pellets. The motion pulled both Jack’s padded vest and the shirt itself underneath it over Jack’s straining shoulders, and Ennis’s hands dragged down the length of Jack’s arms, finishing the work he’d started on the clothes. His mouth was soon fastened on the sweet skin of Jack’s neck, sucking and relishing the light tangy taste he associated only with Jack. His mouth watered, but even that wonderful taste wasn’t enough to quench Ennis’s thirst. He needed to feel Jack close to him, to feel him quiver at his touch and go feverish without it. He needed to hear him moan and groan and see him completely at a loss in his arms. So Ennis’s hands roamed southwards, starting over the hollow dip in Jack’s neck and following down over Jack’s chest and stomach before he settled over the buckle of Jack’s belt and pulled it hard.

Jack moaned and threw his head back on the bed, reaching out with shaky hands to remove Ennis’s own set of clothes. Ennis helped him, and in a moment their upper bodies came crushing fiercely together to feel bare skin upon bare skin, hard muscle against hard muscle, ribs crushing, nipples hardening. Without any measure of self-constraint, Jack’s fingernails scratched thin trails down Ennis’s back, leaving deep, red marks as they went, and marking that which was, for the time being at least, totally his. When his hands reached the end, they cupped Ennis’ butt cheeks hard and pushed Ennis against him, almost knocking the wind out of his lungs with the force. For it, Jack received a low growl in the ear. The growl travelled straight through him, past his twisted guts and right down to his throbbing cock. His face and neck were hot, his whole body starting to go red as though he’d spent too long under a strong sun, and Jack let out a groan that was long and needy.

When Jack’s hands moved around to the front and started to undo Ennis’s belt, his groan practically turned into a whimper, like that of a dying animal about to be put out of its misery. His whole being shook with the excitement; his chest, and less holy parts of his body, swelling with anticipation. Somehow he managed to unbuckle the damned belt, undo the button, and pull down the zipper in three consecutive and accurate moves. Before he had time to go any further, however, Ennis rose off his knees rapidly and hauled him up from the floor, turning him around just as quickly and throwing him sprawled on his belly across the bottom half of the bed. With the position, Jack’s legs bent awkwardly at the knees against the wooden board of the bed, where they pushed almost hard enough to leave a bruise.

Jack punched the bed. “Yes,” he hissed out, burying his face in the covers and breathing fast against them. “Yes, yes, yes,” he murmured repeatedly. He was clenching his teeth so hard the strength was almost big enough to lock his jaw.

“Shh. Easy, cowboy. Easy.” Instead of calming, Ennis’s words also came out through clenched teeth, sounding agitated, and Ennis wasn’t sure whether he’d meant them for Jack or for himself. He yanked Jack’s jeans and drawers down to his ankles, in a mirror image of their first encounter in that small tent in the mountain. And just like that time, with no more or less refinement, Ennis spit in his hand and pushed two fingers up Jack’s puckered entrance.

“Ooah, fuck!” Jack yelped, pushing back against Ennis’s hand. The next thing he knew, Ennis had already withdrawn his fingers and was pushing against the same place with his hard cock instead. At the initial tightness, Ennis let out a strangled cry, not too unlike the howling of an injured elk, but with a couple of rough shoves, he was home free. He soon started to pump fast against Jack, gripping at whatever piece of flesh he could find on Jack’s trembling body.

This was the way they liked it, with no words spoken, with no emotional declarations that would have sounded artificial to their ears. For them, it was actions over words, rough shoving and fucking, frantic in its anxiety, overwhelming in its intensity.

Jack fisted the bed covers and pulled them down roughly, causing a lamp on one of the bedside tables to fall on the floor with a strident clutter. Twisting the sheets into a further tangle, he managed to drag his weight from falling off the edge of the bed. The fast thrusts coming at him from behind helped his pursuit up the furniture.

The thrusts increased in tempo, if not in power, making both men grunt and growl louder – one against the mattress, the other against a bare, perspiring back. Ennis held Jack down by the hips, leaving red fingerprints in the soft flesh as he drew Jack’s body back towards him for jab after jab against the sweet spot inside him. Jack opened his mouth and bit down on a bunched portion of bed quilt held in a fist. A second later, he almost gagged on it when he tried to muffle a scream of pleasure.

Ennis also bit down, but near Jack’s shoulder instead of the quilt, his eyes scrunching shut and rolling to the back of his skull behind his eyelids. Suddenly, he bent down and forwards, practically falling with his whole weight on Jack, and making choking noises afterwards. His head was still near Jack’s shoulder blades, his body pushing down hard, driving Jack’s cock into the mattress as Ennis kept trying to go as deep as he possibly could, and beyond. With a handful of forceful thrusts, he came hard inside Jack, letting a long, rumbling sound emerge from the back of his throat. The sound reverberated its way around the small room, and before it was gone, Jack’s cock twitched between the sheet folds where it was buried, shooting out jets of semen between them. They signalled the end of his orgasm and the beginning of the relief his body had been seeking.

A few seconds later, still panting against Jack’s back, Ennis opened his eyes. His vision was blurry, unfocused, and his head was spinning. He felt as though someone had just taken the lid off some kind of internal pressure cooker and let the built up steam rush out all at once, leaving him dizzy. Their bodies rose and fell rapidly, hot and slick with sweat, finally sedated in the calming way they could only achieve after doing what they’d just done.

Ennis pushed off of Jack with one final grunt and took a step forward to fall mighty unceremoniously on the mattress, face first, beside Jack. His belt, looped through the jeans that were still entangled around his dusty cowboy boots, rung a couple of clinking notes. Jack pushed with his own boots on the floor and managed to drag most of his body further up the thoroughly messed bed, a feat short of miraculous given how weak and wobbly his legs had been rendered.

“Damn!” Jack whispered. “I needed that.”

“No fuckin’ shit,” Ennis replied, true to his eloquent style. Afterwards, they looked at each other and broke down in hearty laughter. They laughed long and hard, until little tears gathered in the corners of their eyes.

A little while later they lay completely naked on the bed, smoking a cigarette and trying to figure out what they were to do with themselves. They caught up with each other’s past in the last four years, going back to the moment they split up by the foot of Brokeback Mountain; but mostly they stayed quiet, breathing deeply in unison, relishing in the feeling of their skins touching once more, their hands caressing and stroking.

It was the same old thing between them, just like it’d been back when they herded sheep together that summer. The physical need they had for each other was as honest and open as it could possibly be, but the important thoughts inside them, the ones that really mattered, the ones that spoke about how they felt for each other and what they meant to each other – those thoughts they kept to themselves. It was their way of reasoning that the other could guess the extent of their feelings because deep down the other felt just the same. And if the other didn’t, at least they could pretend it was so and never have to face the shameful possibility they weren’t loved in the same way they loved, in the way a man shouldn’t love another man. Ever since they could remember, they’d heard the same speech everywhere. It was a well-taught lesson, hammered into their brains by parents, school teachers and church reverends alike, whether Methodists or Christians: that way of loving was reserved for a man and a woman, a husband and his wife. All their silence and secret hoping, however, was as useless an exercise as useless gets, because in actuality their feelings, and the unfounded fears that came with them, were one and the same. All they agreed on out loud, however, was further talk come morning.

Eventually they fell asleep.

They had a dreamless night, sweet and sound like they’d only had by the river shore in Brokeback, when they used to fall asleep to the sound of water running over the pebbles in the river bed. Each other’s presence was calming, soothing to their hearts, like an effective balm applied to a deep wound in need of healing. Dawn found them entangled in each other, wrapped between the faded sheets. Ennis was the first to wake up. The first thing he became aware of was Jack’s warm body and his own arm wrapped loosely around it. They were lying on their sides, very close to one another.

For a moment, Ennis just lay there, listening to Jack’s shallow breathing. After a little while, he nuzzled his face against the base of Jack’s neck and breathed in Jack’s musky scent. Even though Ennis wasn’t the travelling kind, no one could have convinced him there existed on the face of the Earth a more wonderful scent than that of Jack Twist, who smelled sweeter than any flower, and even better than his second favourite smell: that of freshly-mowed grass. He opened his eyes slowly, his eyelids fluttering lightly, and he saw the line of a smooth neck with a set of tiny moles he could have mapped off by heart. Short, chestnut hair curled softly around them. Ennis closed his eyes again, as though afraid the person in his arms might suddenly vanish, afraid everything about last night and the present time might be another one of his hopeless fantasies. And afraid that if he suddenly realized it, it would all end in the bitter disappointment of reality with the light of day. No matter what he said, or rather what he didn’t say, he wouldn’t have wanted to wake up any other way. Not now, nor ever.

Ennis rubbed his leg slowly up Jack’s own, feeling the light hairs on their legs brush together, though not quite tickling. Although he would never say it, and only allow himself to think about it very fleetingly, he absolutely loved everything about Jack’s body, right down to a little patch of bold hair on the outside of Jack’s right upper thigh. Ennis found the bold patch and caressed it in little circles. The skin was silky soft to the touch of his roughened fingertips. He breathed in again, this time deeper. He was hard again, so fucking hard it hurt. It was always the same thing when Jack Twist was within touching range, and sometimes when he was just within optical range. When Ennis found himself so helpless, he often reassured his conscience by telling it not to fight against the current cursing through him because the man was simply too much for him.

Slowly, Ennis started rubbing his leg up and down a little more firmly. His hard cock pressed against the crook of Jack’s butt cheeks, creating a delicious sensation, and Ennis remembered last night. It had been wild. It had been desperate, almost as if his very life had depended on fucking Jack straight through the bed and right into oblivion. In contrast to the previous night, however, that morning he craved something different. Something that was tender and softer, like the golden glow that came through a slit in the tattered curtains and bathed Jack’s bare skin.

Ennis pulled the covers over his head and cupped his body so that it fit even more snug against Jack. One of his hands took to wandering the length of Jack’s body, starting at the shoulder and going all the way down to Jack’s thigh, finishing on that wonderful, little patch where hairs never grew. He buried his face further into the shallow folds of muscle on either side of Jack’s spine, nuzzling his nose against the skin there. Then, so as not to disturb Jack, he placed the softest of little pecks on the jut that was Jack’s shoulder blade. For a while he continued kissing Jack in this way, whilst at the same time he continued with a light caress along Jack’s shoulder, this time down his back arm, past the elbow, and further down his forearm, where he came to a stop. With a thumb, he traced the soft skin on the inside of Jack’s wrist, feeling his pulse.

The slow heartbeat belied the true state of its owner for Jack had actually been roused awake by the little kisses to his back, although he was still caught in the tendrils of the kind of peaceful sleep that’s hard to break away from. What awaited him when he finished awakening, however, was worth leaving the world of dreams. Jack lied motionless, keeping his breathing even and secretly enjoying the gentle touches Ennis bestowed upon him. When Ennis was tracing a slow path down his chest, Jack reached up slowly and, without breaking the spell, grasped Ennis’s hand, who wasn’t at all surprised when Jack guided him in the direction of nether regions.

In Ennis’s hand, Jack’s hardening cock was the smoothest thing he’d ever touched, and warm like a bun fresh out of the oven. Ennis took his time exploring it, becoming familiar with the many textures he’d never noticed before – slightly coarse where some pubic hairs grew at the base; sinewy with thin, filling veins in the middle; finely creased in the folds of the foreskin; and impossibly smooth right over the swollen head. Ennis rubbed his thumb on that rounded spot, and soon Jack’s slit was leaking with excitement. Ennis lathered the transparent fluid all over the head, making its dry smoothness turn slippery, and wringing out a soft moan out of Jack’s throat.

Apart from that one initial gesture of initiative, however, Jack moved no further for a long time. His back absorbed the heat of Ennis’s panting breath, and his cock continued to harden and twitch from the slow strokes Ennis started giving it.

When Ennis started moving his body, they fell into a synchronised rocking rhythm they weren’t even aware of performing. It was the slowest they’d ever been with each other, and had they had half a mind to think about it, they would have surprised themselves with how naturally it came and with the extent to which they welcomed this new form of tenderness. That morning, in the early hours of sunrise, there was no hurry in their touches, no crazy need to get things over and done with.

Whole minutes passed in slow rocking and soft stroking before Jack, fully awake but in the strange fog of a new state of consciousness, turned his body around. Lying on his other side, he pulled his legs over Ennis and wrapped himself around him. When their glans touched, they gasped and embraced each other. Their mouths found one another, and the slightly rough stubble which came with the beginnings of a morning beard only served to make the rest of the softness in which they basked a little more bearable, a little less overpowering in its stimulation.

Even though awake, Jack had yet to open his eyes. Instead of doing so, however, he pushed them closed further and let out an almost silent sigh by Ennis’s ear. Pushing on one knee against the mattress, he rolled over Ennis, making Ennis lie on his back. He cocooned their bodies together when he wrapped his legs under Ennis’s, lying over him in an almost foetal position. In this way their cocks rubbed close together – from the very tip to way right down in the testicles and everything pleasurable in between.

The bed made practically no sound as Jack commenced rolling his body in a slow waving motion, rubbing himself against Ennis. His head was buried in the crook of Ennis’s neck, his mouth pressed softly in the dip between muscle and clavicle. Ennis’s hands roamed the length of his sensitive back, rolling over his ribs and his flat bones, following the motion of the rest of Jack’s body – down when he moved downwards and up when he moved upwards.

Not long passed in this way, when on one of Ennis’s trips up Jack’s back ended in him grabbing and pulling the short hairs on the nape of Jack’s neck, and Jack’s whole body gave a violent shudder. He moaned very low, so low only Ennis could hear him, and he turned his face to kiss Ennis. His lips slid and pecked alternately around the earlobe and the underside of Ennis’s roughened jaw and cheek, relentlessly and with a subdued ardency. Then Jack contorted his body and dragged his feet slowly up the back of Ennis’s calves, his toes curling to fit a curve round the nook behind Ennis’s knee, and when his posture prevented him from going further up Ennis’s hamstrings, he run his feet back down until they were entangled with Ennis’s own. He caressed them with the soles of his feet, not using his toenails, trying to achieve the same effect a father might have had if twirled on the same spot. This time Jack made sure his eyes were open to see Ennis’s rare, mellow smile, and he smiled, too, just before he nipped Ennis’s jaw.

On that bed Jack was leading the game, and Ennis allowed himself to be manipulated and taken wherever Jack wanted to go, not feeling in the least out of control because of it. The next thing Jack did was take Ennis’s right hand from where it lay around the curve of his lower back, and he brought it up to his lips. Closing his eyes again, Jack parted them and put two of Ennis’s fingers inside his mouth. He licked around them slowly, trying not to use his teeth to achieve a smooth and slippery sensation. He licked them for longer than necessary, simply because he enjoyed it and because he could tell Ennis enjoyed it too, from the way Ennis’s breath caught in his chest every time he pushed them deep, towards the warmer end at the back of his throat. When he opened his eyes again, Jack slipped the fingers out of his mouth, letting them linger on his lips and caressing them with his hot breath a little, and then, slowly, he moved Ennis’s hand back near where it’d lain before he took it, but this time a little lower.

Jack needn’t have guided him, though, because Ennis knew just what to do. He knew just what Jack wanted and he gave it to him, no judgements passed. He stretched Jack for a long time, scissoring his entrance with two fingers until Jack was so ready Ennis could fit in a third digit. When Ennis did just that, Jack pulled away slowly and sat up a little, resting the palms of his hands on either side of Ennis’s head. Without so much as a single blink, Jack carefully lowered his body, impaling himself completely on Ennis with just a little bit of help. As soon as Jack reached the hilt, a single tear rolled down the side of his face. Frowning, Ennis cupped Jack’s wet cheek with his large hand, wiping the tear away with his thumb.

“I’m fine.” Jack leaned his face into Ennis’s warm touch and let his eyes slip closed again. Another hot tear followed the first. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he whispered, shaking his head. “We’re fine, we’re fine,” he said as he lay his head down.

This time it wasn’t fucking – it was making love. Pure and simple. Honest and true. They had screwed each other’s brains out in the past. They had fucked fast, and they had fucked slow – but they’d never made love, not the way they did on that bed.

A low sniffle from Jack broke the almost complete silence in the cheap motel room. The sniffle slowly turned into almost silent whimpering and Ennis wasn’t sure the wetness dampening his neck, where Jack’s head was nestled, was in fact of the same nature as the sweat crowning his own brow. For a moment, Ennis was at a loss. Bedding Jack had almost always been hard, fast, bordering on angry at times. Save for a couple of rare times in the mountain, it’d never been the highly emotional experience it was turning out to be under the tattered covers of a godforsaken road motel. And even then, it hadn’t been as powerful. Jack whimpered again and his shoulders began shaking. He still rode Ennis, however, and actually started going faster and more earnestly than before. Ennis’s inner instinct was to hold Jack tighter in his arms, and Jack clung back to him with an almost desperate hold.

It was a strange place they got themselves into afterwards. The place was new and sinister, somewhat scary for two men like Ennis and Jack. That morning their silence turned so deafening, all they could hear inside their heads were the things never spoken. In each other’s embrace, they reached a point of no return, a place they thought to be wrong and forbidden, but a place they couldn’t make themselves leave nonetheless. And yet, at the same time, they felt as though there was no other place to be at if they were to call themselves alive. It was almost as though everything they’d done in their lives up to that point had been to the purpose of finding themselves caught in that one eye-opening moment. They opened up their hearts and savored it. For the first time they understood themselves properly, which was something Ennis needed in greater measure than Jack. And it was right then, looking into each other’s eyes, that it really dawned on them: the gift of self-acceptance.

Jack’s eyes kept looking into Ennis’s, their lips parted in silent confession. He nodded. Ennis nodded. They touched their foreheads together, their noses bumping as they kept nodding without uttering a single word. Jack started driving himself faster into Ennis, and he sensed his climax nearing. Panting and overwhelmed with emotion, they erupted into so intense an orgasm it was almost as painful as it was pleasurable.

Afterwards Jack was the first to untangle himself from Ennis’s tight hold, but he didn’t move very far. He shifted to the side, keeping his legs draped over Ennis. He wiped his cheeks dry with one sweeping motion of the back of his hand and lied his head down on Ennis’s other shoulder. Out of the entrancing hold of a few minutes ago, Jack didn’t dare look into Ennis’s eyes for fear of what he might find there – or rather, for fear of what he might find was no longer there. He’d seen it fade away before, once in the mountain, and tried as he’d might to glance it again for the rest of the summer, it’d completely gone from Ennis’s expression, to be cast away and deeply buried in a place Jack couldn’t reach.

“Sum ride, huh?” Jack ventured out in a whisper. He swallowed, finding his mouth very dry.

“Sum ride,” Ennis answered, nestling back against the pillow. He put an arm around Jack and reached a hand up to curl between his fingers a few strands of wet hair sticking to Jack’s forehead.

Their bodies cooled down at a slow pace.

“So…” Ennis started with a very low mumble, right by Jack’s temple. “You all right, cowboy? You sounded a little choked up thear.” Ennis cleared his throat a little. “Sumthin’ wrong?”

“Nu-uh,” Jack answered quietly. “I was happy.” Jack tilted his face upwards, searching for the two slits that were Ennis’s eyes. He found them and looked into them with the same honesty he would have looked into his own self. He thought he could still see that faint glow from that time in the mountain and also from a moment ago – the glow of love – in Ennis’s pupils.

Ennis blinked once. The glow was still there.

“I was so happy,” Jack said frankly. “So. Damned. Happy.”

Ennis opened his mouth as if to say something, but after a few long seconds, he’d yet to wrench out some words.

But Jack wasn’t worried. “Wait. Hang on, let me guess.” Jack scowled, trying to look dead serious. “That a fact?” he declared more than actually asked, imitating Ennis’s drawled way of speech.

After a mighty long pause, Ennis rolled his eyes. Just like that time four years ago, the glow was starting to fade. “That wasn’t what I was gonna say, smartass.”

“No?”

Ennis shook his head and Jack smiled lopsidedly. “What then?”

“I ain’t tellin’ you nuthin’ now.”

“Aah, you’re just sayin’ that ‘cos you know I guessed right. Fess up to it, Ennis del Mar.”

“That old trick ain’t gonna work with me, cowboy. Save it for someone dumber.”

Jack looked at Ennis sidelong before conceding. “All right, all right. I give,” he said, lying back down, and feeling only a little wounded. He was used to Ennis’s humor and lack of candor, although at times like these he harboured just a smidgeon of hope for a little miracle.

“Heh. Damned Jack fuckin’ Twist thinks he knows it all. Nuthin’ much’s changed thear, I tell you that.”

“Nuthin’ much’s changed anywhere, that’s what I say.” Despite himself, there was a note of bitterness to Jack’s voice.

“Well, sumthings have.” Ennis’s tonne was suddenly grave with seriousness. “And some haven’t,” he added.

“Ain’t that the truth.”

A little clock on one of the bedside tables stroke half past six. A ray of light cut right across the bed, and a little wind sneaked in under the door of the Motel’s room, going almost unnoticed. Jack and Ennis kept silent and to their thoughts, neither making a move to get up nor pretending to go back to sleep. Jack took to pondering the best way to tempt Ennis into spending the rest of the day together. But Jack Twist was a man of big ideas, and even bigger endeavours. So instead of settling down for just that, he soon decided that after convincing Ennis to go away with him for a day or two, he’d move on to the plan he’d thought up for the rest of their lives.

When Ennis noticed how lost in thought Jack was, and once he asserted Jack couldn’t see him out of the corner of his eye, he whispered, so low that if it hadn’t been so quiet to begin with Jack could have missed it, “Hey, cowboy. What I was tryin’ to say before was – what I was tryin’ to say was… ‘t was ‘Me too’, you know. Me too.”

At first Jack didn’t quite make sense of Ennis’s words, but when his memory traced back the minutes past, it dawned on him that Ennis was referring to his declaration about being ‘So. Damned. Happy’. The corners of his lips pulled upwards unbidden and he buried his face in Ennis’s chest, trying to hide a dumb smile that slowly crept up his face. What he failed to realize was Ennis felt it as his cheeks stretched against Ennis’s skin. Fortunately for Ennis, though, with Jack positioned the way he was he had no way of knowing Ennis, too, was hanging his teeth out to dry.

Still grinning but without moving, and only when Jack was sure his voice wouldn’t betray the unusually large dose of idiotic glee he was feeling, he opted for the words that, unlike the day before, truly felt right at that moment, – “That a fact?”

Ennis’s lips twitched, “You bet yer sorry ass it is.”

“Sum fact that.”

Laughing out loud, chests rumbling and mattress jittering, one thing was certain: that sunny morning in a cheap motel room near Riverton, Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar had no cares in the world. They could have dropped their harp plumb through the clouds, quite literally, and not cared who it harmed when they crashed landing. They were reunited, and though four long years had passed since their time in Brokeback Mountain, their feelings for each other hadn’t changed, only strengthened – that they understood without saying, and dang it if they weren’t damned happy about it.

THE END

larcopidis

Open Post

So Damned Happy