Note: This was written for a holiday fic request. I was asked to write about Jack after he left the bar with Jimbo, but before he meets Lureen. Not quite sure if this is what my friend had in mind, but it's what came out when I started thinking about that scene. The lyrics interspersed throughout are from "A Widow's Toast" by Neko Case.
Faster than the speed of gravity.
Jack slaps his hand down, gripping the small bills in his hand like a claim to manhood, shoving them deep in his pockets. If he holds them close, buries them deep enough, he might make it true.
But the laughter catches up to him. He doesn't run; he never runs. Even when he's seen the backhand descend, he stands firm. Because he knows those hands won't kill him, not like the bull's horns, those horns looking to tear him up from the inside out, rend him into a different man.
The hands are fierce, but they don't have the power to make him something he is not.
That's how it catches it you from falling.
He's thought a lot about the difference between flying and falling. Whether landing on your feet means that you were soaring or whether it just means you were lucky, that the bull took a little mercy on you before he went straight for your guts. Sometimes he thinks even the air tastes different when you fly off after the eighth second has passed; it tastes so fine that even if you did die in that ninth, well, hell. You'd do it smiling.
When the first kick knocks out his knee from under him, he remembers. His body always remembers what it's like to fall. The lessons of the flesh are not never forgotten. His daddy made sure of that.
The legs are vicious, and this time, there's no one to catch him. He wonders if there ever were.
And how it always, always, always slips away.
He's been through worse. Hell, a year later, and he's still reeling from that surprise punch. Wasn't so painful, except for the parts that wouldn't stop bleeding. Cracking his lips upward, it's a grimace so far removed from joy that it can not be named a smile, and he remembers. Blood calling out to blood. His blood to another's, his pain to another's.
Isn't there something to be said for a want that goes deeper than happiness?
He thought so, once. Now he leaves his thinking up to the bulls he knows, and rides towards nothing every day and every night.
He's hanging midair, still, praying that someday he'll fall.