Chapter Text
Jack
The storm moves in like some hulking beast on wings of black sable, covering the stars on its furious trek across the sky. Thunder booms and roars, reverberating a hundred times over as it bounces off staggering rock walls, accompanied by a wailing wind that whips the grasslands into a frenzy. The sheep huddle together, bleating in distress and then growing soundless in their fear, and there is nothing to be done but for them to wait out the thundersnow.
Jack Twist barely makes it back to camp in one piece, cheeks reddened from the lashing wind; the temperature is rapidly dropping. His mount had made her displeasure clear by whinnying and doing her best to buck him off when she thought his guard was down. She’ll have to try harder next time. Even so, his thighs are sore from locking his legs tight around the saddle to keep from eating dirt, fingers stiff from seizing the reins like a lifeline.
The first sign something is amiss is the lack of animals in camp. No stubborn ass mule, nor the chestnut horse Ennis favors so. Jack dismounts and surveys the scene, flexing his sore digits inside his gloves. An ash pile and wood thoroughly blackened without a hint of smoke streaming from the remains suggest the fire has been out for some time. Their tent is a good eight feet from the circle of stones lining the fire pit, and Jack watches with a growing sense of unease as the canvas flaps ripple in the rising gale, the loose knot usually drawing them closed torn free by the wind.
Ennis hasn’t been here for some time, hours by the look of it. Friday means Ennis leaves at daybreak for his weekly jaunt to Brokeback’s base to pick up supplies: food,
soap, ammunition for the guns, grain for the stock, and with any luck a bottle or two of whiskey. But morning is long past and Jack is late getting back to camp as it is.
Ennis should be here by now, putting the finishing touches on a makeshift windbreak for their hoofed companions or tying down their refreshed stores so the sacks don’t burst open and send tin cans rolling down the mountainside. He should be getting ready to hustle out of the cold and the dark and seek shelter and warmth with Jack under the blankets inside the tent. Jack bets they could generate enough heat to power a furnace if they set their minds to it.
The mare balks at being tied up to the highline strung between two wooden stakes Ennis had hammered deep into the earth a couple weeks back. Jack hates to leave the
spirited horse exposed to the elements, but it’s safer than hitching her to a post beneath the trees – their boughs will be heavy with ice and snow by morning, apt to break off and deliver a powerful blow to whoever is unfortunate enough to be beneath their bowers.
“Easy, easy,” Jack soothes, fastening the braided leather strips he and Ennis use in place of rope to the halter and running an absentminded hand along his mare’s flank.
Jack tries to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something has obviously happened, although there’s no telling what it is with the limited information Jack has available. He doesn’t think Ennis would decide to (quite literally) take a hike and abandon him with hundreds of sheep, but he also knows the stoic cowboy has been spooked by the force of his own emotions the past few weeks. Worse than that, Ennis may be seriously injured, lying crumpled on the mountainside after being thrown from his horse, or perhaps that territorial bear has made a reappearance…
Jack shakes his head in an effort to dispel images of Ennis with broken bones or devastating – perhaps mortal – injuries, the golden skin he’d spent so much time worshiping lacerated and ripped to shreds by jagged claws and teeth. An impending sense of doom hangs over the camp with as much heaviness as the storm clouds
above. Snow is about to come down in great drifts and hefty white currents, and the window to act is closing – may already have closed.
Making up his mind that any personal risk is more than worth it, Jack decides he’ll put on a few extra layers and patrol the surrounding area on foot. It’s going to be difficult to keep his footing walking against the wind but riding the mare would be even more foolhardy. He ducks into the tent to go through his pack and takes off his coat with the wool lining. He puts on an extra shirt and digs around for the backup oilcloth jacket he brought with him. He paws through his clothes and finds it tucked at the very bottom of his pack, a sheathed hunting knife resting on top of the waterproof fabric.
Jack shrugs into the jacket and quickly adds his fleece-lined coat to the accumulating layers. At the last second, he grabs the knife and attaches the sheath to his belt.
What are you gonna do, Twist? he asks himself. Stab a goddam bear with this ole toothpick?
Snorting at the idea of an ineffectual skirmish with a member of the Ursa Major clan – a big brown bear would have claws longer than Jack’s measly hunting knife - Jack bends down to tighten the straps on his boots and rushes back out into the brumal air. At least Ennis had started taking the .30-.30 with him after that initial dangerous run-in. It is an insubstantial relief considering his echoing absence.
Despite its increasing unlikeliness, Jack holds onto the fading hope that the supply pickup had been delayed getting to the bridge where Ennis is supposed to meet Agguire’s deliveryman once a week. The driver blew a tire on the unpaved roads and didn’t know a damn thing about attaching a spare; the comestibles had been shaken loose from the pickup bed in a high wind and scattered, taking hours to retrieve and repack what wasn’t destroyed; a soaring eagle dropped a stone through the metal roof and knocked the driver unconscious and he had taken most of the day to come to…
Jack’s racing, illogical thoughts are his only company. Might be he better do something about that.
The first snowflakes come swirling down, ghostly grey in the inclement twilight. Jack will feel the cold down in his bones soon enough. He hurries to the nearest switchback, a faster route because it is steeper than the gentle, rolling slopes the sheep prefer, and begins descending Brokeback Mountain.
Ennis
Although he doesn’t know it yet, Jack turns out to be right on multiple counts. Manuel, who appears like clockwork at twelve every Friday in a rusted blue pickup, is a few hours late, but not for any of the inventive reasons Jack had flitting through his head.
“My sister’s got a sick kid,” Manuel tells Ennis morosely when he shows up at the bridge a quarter after three PM. “Pneumonia. Had to drive her and my niece over to the
emergency room next town over. Agguire said it’d be my job if I didn’t get here by day’s end. Bad weather comin too.”
Ennis’s irritation at Manuel disappears. Agguire is a grade A asshole, and it figures a sick child wouldn’t make a bit of difference in his book. It’s not like there hadn’t been plenty of water and tempting tufts of grass nearby for the horses. Ennis had done some cloud gazing while he waited, noting the dark clouds gathering far off in the distance like the menacing sails of a phantom ship, and eaten salty strips of beef jerky washed down with the last bottle of beer Jack had slid into his saddlebags with a wink and a grin.
“Can’t be helped,” Ennis grunts. “’Appreciate you comin in spite a the circumstances.”
Ennis has more sense than to bitch about their detestable employer to someone who isn’t Jack. He gives Manuel next week’s list that he’d written with a stubby pencil by the fireside Thursday evening and made an addendum to just a few hours before. While he waited, Ennis had been thinking on Jack Twist, his abundant appetite, and incessant yammering about his momma’s fine cooking and how much he missed it. Ennis had fished the pencil nub and scrap of paper out of his pocket and scribbled corned beef hash at the top of the list instead of at the bottom so’s it would be more noticeable.
Jack had practically waxed poetic about the damn stuff when he was on one of his food recollections. Ennis tried to tell himself it made sense to order more high-protein food – sheepherding was hard work, after all – but really, he wanted to see Jack’s quicksilver smile when he served up one of Jack’s favorite meals.
Manuel’s glance at the list is cursory; he folds it without comment, and it vanishes in one of the many pockets dotting his vest. Ennis bites his tongue because he’s not supposed to care this much about what Jack Fuckin Twist has for breakfast.
Manuel helps him unload the truck bed, frowning as each minute keeps him from family matters. Ennis urges him to get going, insisting on hitching the loads to Cigar and the mule on his own. It’d be swell to have the other mule as well, but the stupid creature injured its leg kicking at rocks (presumably to entertain itself, seems like something the zany thing would do) and has to stay behind in camp.
“Thanks. Don’t mention it to boss-man. See you next week,” Manuel says, already turning away.
“Good luck,” Ennis says to his retreating back, not sure if he even hears.
The roar of the truck engine grows dim as Manuel drives back toward civilization. Ennis secures the two bulging packs with a practiced touch, linking them to the hitches, and then he gets his foot in the stirrup and swings a long leg over the saddle, settling in for the hours-long ascent.
The wilderness lies ahead, and so does Jack Twist, who has proved to be more untamable than the most remote wilds.
~ ~ ~
The truck’s three-hour and fifteen-minute delay is the first part of Jack’s prophesizing that comes to pass. The second part, a scenario born out of sheer paranoia and
involving an apex predator, makes an unwelcome appearance shortly after the first.
Ennis doesn’t like how fast those clouds are moving. They’re far off and he can still hear them grumbling worse than an ornery old man. The temperature is dropping fast too. It had almost felt hot at a lower altitude in direct sunlight for all those hours. Now as he makes his way through the timberline there’s a nip in the air, hinting at the brittle, biting cold that will fall over the mountain as the sun goes down.
Ennis imagines stubborn, spirited Jack staying out late to keep an eye on the sheep. There’d be nothing but the puptent to keep him warm since a fire would die out as soon as the wind got too strong. Jack has an impulsive streak that Ennis is by turns frustrated by and grateful for. Like as not he hadn’t even brought an extra blanket when he galloped out of camp that morning.
Of course, Jack should have gone up to the sheep the previous night instead of waiting until Ennis had to leave for the bridge at sunrise. Ennis would take responsibility for Jack shirking his chores. He’d kept him mighty distracted all night. Waking up in the predawn pressed tight against Jack almost made him call off his supply run and stay in the tent, but they couldn’t abandon their posts entirely. Aguirre would have them replaced faster than a lightning strike.
“Better get going,” Jack had said, watching Ennis tug on his jeans with unguarded lust. “The quicker you go the quicker you get back to me.”
Jack is always saying foolish things like that, declarations of fondness or desire that tilt Ennis’s world on its axis. Ennis is not a man of many words, is in fact a man of
inveterate silent observation and abrupt action. He had given Jack a hard stare, a warning hidden there, and then kissed him with bruising force.
Ennis is caught up in a whirlwind in his head, shame and longing inextricable from the other. He doesn’t hear the birds go quiet in the trees. The leaves stop rustling as the wind dies down momentarily, a flat, uncanny hush broken only by the clopping of hooves on the track. Cigar whickers high and nervous. The mule plods along doggedly as if matters of life and death are beyond him.
There’s a guttural snarl and the blur of a hulking shadow rushing out of the undergrowth. Cigar screams, human-like and horrible, as the umbral specter latches onto his haunches on the left side, and his balance starts to give. Ennis reacts without thinking, a staunch refusal to let the life be crushed from him making him act on instinct.
He leaps off Cigar as the horse threatens to go over, smashing into the moraine littering the trail.
It feels like every particle of air has been slammed from his lungs. Ennis lays there like a beached starfish, unable to breathe from the impact, and then finally sucks in a great whooping inhale of oxygen and launches to his feet, body twanging like a guitar string on the verge of snapping.
The bear he’d encountered weeks before has visibly lost weight. Bad teeth and age are treacherous bedfellows when it comes to bears. This one is lean and hungry, busted, craggy teeth still managing to rip a chunk of stringy meat from Cigar’s tensor muscle. The huge paws ending in razors the size of knives have pushed the pack out of the way like it doesn’t weigh more than a feather.
The horse sways and screams like a woman dying during a bloody birthing. Ennis doesn't know how Cigar stays upright, but somehow, he does. Cigar’s large body acts as a barrier between Ennis and the bear, however temporary. Suddenly the horse’s unprecedented balance makes sense; the mule is still tied to Cigar and is trying to run off into the forest of lodgepole pines, pulling against the weight of the bear in a mad dash for safety.
Ennis surges forward, the seconds dwindling to the interval between heartbeats, and pulls the .30-.30 from where it’s strapped along Cigar’s barrel torso on the right. The line connecting the nameless mule to Cigar finally gives and Ennis throws himself backward as the momentum causes Cigar to fall on his right side with a great crash, cratering the earth where Ennis had been standing milliseconds before.
The bear rips further into Cigar’s body, severing an artery, gore sticking in his fur and blood spraying his muzzle, the mad black eyes glittering. Ennis, gasping and horrified, hoists the gun up, aims, and pulls the trigger, once, twice, three times, and a fourth for good measure, leaving one bullet left in the gun. The first bullet disintegrates one of those crazed, blood-soaked eyes, a lucky shot, and the second makes a strange hollow thunk as it enters the bear’s thick skull. The third hits the bear’s shoulder and the fourth tears its bottom jaw clean from its hinge.
The brown bear gazes at Ennis out of its one good eye, as if shocked to be unseated from its throne as king of the forest. Then it collapses and dies in a series of juddering convulsions.
Cigar is bleeding out, whinnying screeches reduced to pitiful gurgles. Ennis has one bullet left. His hands are steady when he puts a bullet in Cigar’s head.
“M’sorry,” Ennis grinds out. Cigar has been a loyal, helpful friend, and now he’s on the ground with pieces rent from him and a bullet in his brain.
Ennis clutches the gun, shaking from head to toe in a delayed reaction. His vision warbles and fuzzes at the edges. He doesn’t want to pass out right here next to two corpses, the smell of which might draw other unsavory beasts.
“Jesus,” Ennis chokes, swiping a hand over his eyes. He doesn’t want to look at Cigar’s mangled body.
His hat is lying on the ground twelve feet away from the site of the slaughter, farther than he’d been thrown. He picks it up and puts it on, not bothering to check for dirt. He hurts all over. Nothing seems broken, though, just bruised and sore. He has no more bullets left, and all he wants to do is find Jack.
Shaking his head and digging his nails into his palm to dispel the lightheadedness creeping up on him, Ennis trudges up the path, too tired and shaken up to go after the
mule. It’s the smarter of the two mules that came up the mountain with them. He has hopes it will find its way back.
He has hours to go on weary feet. He hopes he’ll find his way back, too.
~ ~ ~
Jack
Jack is hunched like a turtle inside the overlapping collars of his shirts and jackets. Snow pelts him in a relentless deluge, stinging his eyes when it blows under the brim of his hat. His ears went numb a while ago and are icicle-cold when he brushes his fingers over them.
Worried he’d miss Ennis on his way back if he continued taking the alternate route he was on, Jack had taken a shortcut via an overgrown footpath that sliced through the tossing trees and reconnected with the more moderate grade favored by the sheep. Jack had shouted Ennis’s name until he was hoarse, the volume of his shouts and the below freezing temperature flaying his throat.
Jack won’t last from dusk until dawn without shelter, but that means Ennis won’t either.
He up and left, Twist. You scared ‘im off. You’re too much for him, too much for
anybody. The voice hissing these cruel doubts sounds suspiciously like Jack’s father.
Jack’s eyesight is wicked sharp. His momma used to tell him he had eagle eyes when he was a boy, and they come in handy now that the cloud cover has swallowed up the starlight. The shadows hold a menacing, watchful quality. He swears the branches tearing at his clothes are trying to embrace him and keep him from moving until he
freezes to death.
Be jus like you to die for someone who don’t give a shit about you.
“Oh, fuck off!” Jack yells, because he is having a bad enough go of it without his daddy’s scornful castigations rocketing through his head.
“Glad yer so thrilled to see me, Jack,” someone says from just beyond the curve in the trail.
Jack yelps and fumbles for the knife at his waist. Then the gruff voice sinks in and relief melts away all his fears.
“Ennis!” Jack flies around the bend, crashing into the tall, slender figure fighting against the wind.
Ennis catches him and keeps them both from taking a tumble. “What are you doin out here, Jack? In this weather? You fuckin crazy?”
“Could ask you the same question, friend. Where you been? Thought you mighta…thought something bad musta happened.”
“Something bad did happen,” Ennis says. He’s looking down into Jack’s face and he hasn’t let go of Jack. “Grizzlies ain’t s’posed to be this far south. That damnable bear mauled Cigar, scared off the mule.”
Jack can’t stop his hands from wandering up and down Ennis’s body, searching for wounds he’s sure must be there.
“Hey now I’m all right.” Ennis grabs Jack’s hands in his and squeezes, then releases him. “Cigar ain’t so good, though. Had to put him down after I shot that bear.”
Jack lets out a string of curses that would put a sailor to shame. “You coulda been killed, Ennis. Miracle you’re standin in front of me and not in pieces down on the trail.”
“Real miracle is he came for me instead a you. You can’t shoot worth a shit, Jack, he’d a drug you off and made mincemeat outta you. Now quit fussin over me. I’m fine.”
Ennis pushes Jack away with no real vehemence when he tries to check him over again. That’s when Jack notices Ennis is wearing far less than he is, tan coat buttoned up over a single shirt. His jaw is clenched, muscle jumping from cold and stress.
“Come on, cowboy. Race ya back to the tent?” Jack keeps his tone light. Ennis took good care of Cigar, keeping him well-fed and well-groomed, and he must be more torn up about his gelding than he’s showing.
He’d offer Ennis one of his coats if he didn’t already know how bullheaded Ennis is. Ennis’s strong hands grip Jack’s shoulders. He spins Jack around so he’s turned toward the summit, and for a glorious moment they’re nestled firm together, Ennis’s front to Jack’s back. Despite how necessary they are, Jack wishes he was wearing fewer layers. It would have been worth all the frigid air in the world to feel more of Ennis’s body.
Ennis shoves him forward, rough tease that he is. “Best get going, rodeo, less you wanna get left in the dust.”
~ ~ ~
Ennis is moon-pale and trembling when they get back to the tent. Jack can tell by Ennis’s slow, jerky movements that he’s in pain and halfway to frozen. He must be in shock because he lets Jack herd him inside the tent and doesn’t protest as Jack takes off the white disc of Ennis’s hat and starts stripping him out of his clothes.
“Read bout this, Ennis. Better we get down to our skin and in the bedroll. I’ll wrap us up in blankets nice n tight, be as good as we had us a radiator, us makin our own heat and all,” Jack says, getting him down to his white-and-blue striped shirt. He pauses to take off his own gloves and begins pushing the buttons through the small slits.
He sucks in a breath once he opens Ennis’s shirt, seeing a trail of discolored splotches reaching around his ribcage. His sides are stained a gloomy purple, and Jack grimaces when he divests Ennis of his shirt and nudges him to get a look at his back. Even though Ennis hasn’t said so, he must’ve jumped or been thrown or some combination of the two. Bruises flower along the expanse of his back, his shoulder blades like two black-tipped wings where he must have taken the brunt of the fall.
“Ennis…” Jack is at a rare loss for words. Tonight, he has come unutterably close to losing this new, precious person in his life.
“What’s that, Jack?” Ennis says, blinking at him as if Jack saying his name has brought him back from some awful place.
“Not ‘xactly what I had in mind for tonight, cowboy,” Jack tells him easily. Ennis has been through enough without taking on Jack’s troubles too.
“Can’t tell ya I had this in mind either, Jack. Hey now, you gettin frisky on me, rodeo?”
Jack shakes his head, mouth quirking up in a smile as he unbuckles Ennis’s belt and sets to work on his jeans. “Might be it’s you who’s getin frisky on me. Look at ya, jus
spent hours walkin uphill in the snow after almost gettin et up by a bear and you’re still thinkin on makin time with me."
"Jack,” Ennis warns in that way he has that always sounds like a dare to Jack.
“Aw I’m teasin. I’d tell you to keep your shirt on if I hadn’t taken it off already.” Jack chuckles and finishes undressing Ennis, who obediently climbs into the bedroll while Jack shucks his many layers.
Fetching two extra blankets, one from his pack and one from Ennis’s, Jack slips in the bedroll with Ennis and wraps them in a snug cocoon. Ennis, who hasn’t ever been the little spoon, harrumphs a bit to make a show of it, squirms in a way that has Jack feeling like the temperature has risen in the span of a second, and then settles down, resting his head on Jack’s bicep.
"Frisky, just like I said,” Ennis whispers smugly, noting Jack’s excitement.
Jack holds Ennis as close and as softly as he can, careful to minimize the pressure on Ennis’s sore back. He nuzzles into the nape of Ennis’s neck, Ennis’s blond curls tickling his forehead.
“Go to sleep, Ennis,” Jack whispers back.
The adrenaline having worn off some time ago, Ennis relaxes in Jack’s arms and immediately drops off into sleep.
Jack stays awake for a short time trying to vanquish a deliriously frustrating mixture of worry and arousal, but soon he too succumbs to the Sandman’s coaxing and slides into dreamland.