All the usual warnings apply, gayness, love, and nudity are below.
Also, I want to apologize to all those who have been patiently waiting for an update, particularly the individual who has emailed me. Thank you for kicking me in the butt, that's what I need to remind me that people actually care whether or not this story is finished. My only excuse is that I'm studying abroad for a year in Egypt, and Cairo is a mad, mad place that I haven't yet settled into. Nonetheless, I still promise that Opportunity will be finished...someday. Hopefully in a timely manner. Just keep bothering me. Really.
zzzzzzzzzz
"Come back to bed, Jack." Ennis said roughly. He wouldn't meet his lover's eyes, fingers twitching against the blanket slung low over his narrow hips.
"That's a hard offer to resist, partner, but you can't keep on distractin' me whenever I bring this up." Jack scrubbed at his short hair with callused fingers. "I want a home, with you. Ennis, don't you want that?" he perched on the bed next to Ennis, looking deep into his plain brown eyes. "Don't you want a life?"
"Jack, I..." Ennis blew out an impatient breath.
"What are you afraid of, Ennis?"
"I'm afraid of people talking!" Ennis shouted, throwing off his blanket and pacing the three steps from closet to kitchen almost wildly. "I'm afraid that next time I get a call saying you're dead, it'll really be you!"
"So you're gonna let 'em win? Let them keep us afraid so we ain't never gonna get the peace we want? Can't you take a chance, Ennis? Can't you take just the chance that we could be happy?" Ennis hesitated for so long that Jack despaired of a reply.
"I...I gotta think." Ennis said finally, seriously. "I'm goin' for a drive." He pulled on his clothes hurriedly and left the small trailer.
Jack stared forlornly at the rumpled bed as he heard Ennis's beat up truck rumble and to the crunch of the tires as they pulled his lover away along the long, empty road.
"Well shit." Jack slammed his hands down on the counter and stared at the interior of the trailer without seeing it. If only he could find a place, a real concrete place somewhere up on a mountain with no one to see. Neither he nor Ennis minded the lonesomeness of it much, and it would be free-er, easier up on a mountaintop. If only he had a deed in his hand to offer Ennis, an ultimatum. A this-is-where-I'm-goin'-and-you-better-follow-if-you-know-what's-good-for-you kinda statement.
His eyes set in determination. If that's what he needed to snare Ennis, then that's what he would do. It was time to start enquiring with friends and businessmen for a nice quiet ranch somewhere far from Texas and Wyoming where they could hunt and fish and raise cattle together. Together.
But meanwhile, he was going after Ennis.
zzzzzzz
Once he'd hitched a ride into town, it wasn't difficult to find his lover. Ennis was terribly predictable, and was sitting right under the gnarled old oak, just where Jack expected to find him. He sat down a careful distance away, twisting his hat in his fingers.
"Gonna brood all day?" he asked, thinking back on times at Brokeback, where Ennis could spend all afternoon staring into the river with a frown on his face. There was a long, desolate silence before Ennis turned his eyes, marred by worried crowsfeet, towards him.
"What you're thinkin', Jack. I dunno if it can happen, here...now. It just don't seem possible. And next time it could be both of us dead." Jack went cold.
"So you're afraid for your own stupid hide!" he spat. "Look, I ain't gonna say it'll be easy, no matter how isolated we get, no matter where we go. But when I look at you I know that anythin' else is a hundred times worse. I'll just dry up, Ennis, and blow away, without you." He was yelling in a whisper, his hissing words striking Ennis like physical blows. "I'm willin' to risk anything to have some kinda future with you and you're tellin' me it ain't worth it to you!"
Ennis gaped at him until he turned away, and then the other cowboy was up and after Jack before he got more than a foot away.
"That's not what I meant!" he said heatedly, trying to keep quiet as he hauled Jack around to look at him. Jack's face was pinched and angry and Ennis pushed back his hat and scratched his head. "I meant that nothin' was worth seein' you dead." The lines around Jack's mouth unpursed slightly. The look in his eyes said he wanted to rest his forehead against Ennis', but he merely sighed.
"Well, without you I might as well be dead." His voice held such a note of resignation and finality that Ennis ached to hold him. They both had to turn away before someone noticed their unnaturally prolonged staring. Sitting by the side of the twisted oak again, there was silence as they both brooded in the dusty sunshine.