Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Fan Fiction & Poetry
Drabbles: A BBM Snapshot in 100 words
Meryl:
Oftentimes I'm reluctant to get into a long work of fanfiction, but I'll happily read a short piece that captures a moment of my favorite characters perfectly.
Over on Live Journal, there's a community called stories100daily where fans can post 100-word pieces called drabbles. They've given authors 100 key words and challenged them to write 100 drabbles, based on the fandom of their choice.
beatriceorme has chosen Jack and Ennis. Here's one of her drabbles:
#56 Breakfast
Coffee was brewing hot and strong, the aroma bending and bowing, dancing lively around the dawn just peeking naughty through the pines. All peeled, sliced and drowning in salt, the spuds sizzled, only a cast iron skillet keeping them from the greedy fire, while two cans of beans – labels curling and withering – sat bubbling. Eggs was in a pan to the side keeping warm and the biscuits company, and elk jerky, not needing the fire’s touch, sat waiting on the banged and dented plates.
Everything was ready.
“Oh…damn, Jack...that feels…so good!”
Breakfast would be starting a little late today.
Here's the link to her journal. Her drabbles range from PG to NC-17 and vary widely in mood, but they're all interesting. Start with her June 13 post: http://beatriceorme.livejournal.com/.
To paraphrase Alma, if any authors here at BetterMost are inspired to write some drabbles on this thread, I'll read 'em if you write 'em. :)
ednbarby:
"Breakfast would be starting a little late today."
;D
Thanks for the pick-me-up.
MaineWriter:
--- Quote from: meryl on June 28, 2006, 04:33:47 pm ---
To paraphrase Alma, if any authors here at BetterMost are inspired to write some drabbles on this thread, I'll read 'em if you write 'em. :)
--- End quote ---
Hi Meryl,
I have 6 drabbles I have written on my "Love Born From Steel" thread.
Leslie
Meryl:
I ran across these short pieces today posted by trascedenza of the Wranglers group over on LiveJournal. Only one is a drabble of 100 words, but they're nice quick reads, and well written, so thought I'd share:
Drabble: Dreams
Word count: 100
Date written: July 06, 2006
Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters—that honor goes to Ms. Proulx.
Dreams
John looked him—washed-out, run-down—didn’t know what was so special about him. Finally here, after all these years, barely a word to say. John knew that this might be his last chance to make things right with Jack, to make the amends he couldn’t when Jack was alive, but the bitterness twisted in him, and protective instinct clutched at his throat.
He wouldn’t let this man, the dream-crusher, take the ashes. He couldn’t, even if it meant Jack would never forgive him. Let Ennis have the shirt, and learn what it meant to dream in agony.
Let him learn.
One-shot: Forgetting
Word count: 250
Date written: June 23, 2006
Forgetting
“Jack?”
“Yes’m?”
“Oh… good. I wasn’t sure you were here. I cain’t hardly see no more.”
“I’m always here, now, ma, no need to worry. Moved in, ’member?—came last week.”
“Oh, that’s right. You always were such a good, boy, Jack. There were so many times I should have told you that, should have, well… You know. Not that I didn’t love your father. But he was never the same after the war… he was so much like you when he was younger… I used t’love to watch him rodeo. I ever tell you about that? He rode somethin’ fine.”
“I ’magine that he did. Did the nurse already give the pill today? I cain’t find her note.”
“The nurse? You mean the lovely young lady trying to sell me cosmetics? I have to get her to stop coming ’round, no time for that, got so much to do ’round the house. You’ll help me, right? Gotta get the house ready for your father, you know how he likes a clean house.”
“Sure ’nough, ’s all taken care of already.”
“Oh, thank goodness. You always were such a good boy. Are you leavin’? You’ll want some coffee?”
Ennis sighed, patiently answering Evelyn’s next round of questions, variations on the same theme. When he left her room twenty minutes later, he sent a prayer up to heaven that Jack would be waiting for her, that he’d finally hear all the things she never told him in life, revealed in dying.
One-shot: Stick It Out
Word count: 409
Date written: July 05, 2006
Stick It Out
“Yeah, well, stick this out, Ennis ‘I can sit on my horse and supervise separatin’ the sheep’ del Mar,” Jack grumbled, making a vow then and there that no matter what kind of persuasion Ennis tried to use tonight, he wasn’t havin’ none a it, and he could damn well stick it out with his right hand for all Jack cared. He hurled another sheep into their area of the pasture, kicking at the grass and muttering all sorts of curses onto Ennis, Aguirre, the fuckin’ Shelayans, and most of all, the sheep, such piss-poor excuses for animals that Jack kept telling them they’d be lucky if all he did was eat ‘em at the end of the day.
Stick it out. Like hell.
* * * * *
His resolve, seemingly so rock hard hours earlier, began to fade as he watched Ennis atop his horse, a sight that he didn’t often get to observe uninterrupted. He maneuvered Cigar Butt with a gentle confidence, thighs bunching tight underneath his jeans. He also couldn’t help but notice the way the wind tousled Ennis’s curls, unruly from the constant wind, or how the muscles in his neck tensed when he yelled at the Shelayans. The sheen of sweat on his skin was enough to make Jack lick his lips.
Damned if he’d give in that easy, though.
* * * * *
At dinner he was still going strong, unable to wash the stink of the sheep off his hands and damned if he hadn’t learned a few words a Spanish while he was at it, too. He looked studiously into his can of beans. And he thought he was sick a them before—lookin’ at ’em this close just made him realize how nasty these things really were. Bettermost his ass. Better than piles a sheep shit, maybe. He could practically feel Ennis shooting him glances, wonderin’ what his problem was. Let ’im stew.
He’d wait another half hour at least.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later, Ennis walked over to Cigar Butt, mumbling something about getting back up to the sheep to get ’em bedded down.
“’Kay, I’ll see ya in the mornin’,” Jack said, casual-like, licking his spoon very slowly and unnecessarily. He could see Ennis kick the ground, hunched his shoulders a little, and gave Jack one last look before turning to his horse.
“Aw, hell,” Jack muttered, smiling. “Never was no good at stickin’ things out.” Ennis didn’t even have time to turn around before he was tackled.
One-shot: Fragments
Word count: 341
Date written: June 13, 2006, 11:30PM
Fragments
“Jack, did ya see it? Shot straight across the sky.” Lureen craned her neck, trying to look up at Jack.
“What now? Sorry, honey, I was tryin’ a figure if those stars over there really make a bear like that fella on TV said. Still don’t see no bear. Think I might a seen an octopus, though, gettin’ his funny little legs into everyone else’s business.”
Lureen smiled a little, resting her head back against Jack’s shoulders. “You make wishes on shootin’ stars? Or you too busy scopin’ out them octopuses?” Her fingers played idly across Jack’s knuckles; she felt his hand curl into a fist.
He paused, and the words slipped out of him, soft as sigh, heavy as mourning, “Cain’t say that I do.”
The statement rattled around Lureen’s head for a few moments, coins in a cup of always-unanswered questions. She wanted to toss them down, see if she could divine any meaning from the way they fell, like a mystic reading tea leaves. She absorbed their meaning, sinking into the melancholy he offered up.
“I used a make wishes. But now…” she bit her lip, voice lowering an octave, “Sometimes I wish I could jump on Belle, start riding, and never look back.”
He tightened his arm around her. “I think… I think I know how you feel.”
Their voices tuned into the same chord, striking a harmonic of echoed sorrow, they saw a choice laid out. It welled up between them, the pregnance of the air right before condensation forms, heralding an irreversible change in direction. Jack took her hands in his, turned to her, their eyes connecting, blue meeting brown, and the first step was taken in the surrendered silence of two people looking for a place to call home, the necessity of youth to make its own mistakes.
“Marry me?”
Her smile transfigured her whole body, like flower opening in the first flush of spring to the brilliance of the sun, and her answer was the first and last true kiss they would share.
Title: Intrusion
Date written: June 22, 2006
Rating: R
Prompt: This challenge involves the power of saying as much as possible, with as few words as possible.
Word count: 249
Intrusion
It is a holy moment.
The sliding, slick and slippery, a friction that ignites nerve endings, trembling through the thin barriers of skin into the deeper muscle, lighting fires along the sinews and tracing tendons in outlines of burning. They can only hear the sounds of ragged breath, drawn against each other, chests pushing in opposition to the rhythm of their fervency. The blankets and pillows lay on the floor, soldiers fallen to the battle of lust, while the bed creaks in time with their movements.
The urgency is mounting, bodies pressed closer and closer, legs entangled—just a little more, just a little more—fingers digging red imprints into shoulders, plunging so deep into the warmth, needing it, wanting to be engulfed in it forever, always looking for that moment of overload when the world fades and only the body speaks. They skirt the edge, razor sharp and delicious, and he finds it, the unspoken desire that pushes him into the oblivion. Lips meet lips reluctantly in the dark, stifling the cries that come with release; he swallows the sounds, tasting like sorrow, and they drive away the images of dark hair, eyelashes that belong on no man—another night, far in the reaches of the past where Ennis first touched that unexpected joy that still bleeds from his bones and haunts his dreams. He can feel nothing of Jack beneath him, soft where he craves hard, woman where he craves man.
…the moment of Alma Junior’s conception.
Title: Hiding
Date written: July 23, 2006
Rating: G
Prompt: Jack's mustache - from Ennis’ POV pro or con. - by beatriceorme
Word count: 100
Hiding
First time he saw it he snorted something unpleasant out of his nose. Couldn’t figure out what it was for; had those nice caps now, what’d he need that thing for? Got used to it, though, didn’t make no comments; weren’t his place. Wasn’t Jack’s wife.
Long after Jack was gone he understood what it had been there for. In his dreams, Jack laughed like a coyote howling at the moon, smiled radiant and burning, not a hair on his face, because that’s why he grew it; didn’t have any smiles left, not for Ennis, not for no one.
Meryl:
I ran across a couple of nice ones by fuzzy-carpet over at livejournal today. Too long to be official drabbles, but an enjoyable short read:
Man-Made
Pearls, he thought. That's exactly what they looked like.
Delicate droplets left upon a damp taut stomach, gleaming in slivered shafts of moonlight. Could have been stripped right from some oyster's shell, the briny flavor they left on his tongue a reminder of the salty oceans in which their namesake were formed.
His own fingertips shone too, soft light reflected across the flat tops of his dirty nails as they went to touch each jewel, as if he might grab hold of them somehow, maybe string them end to end like a necklace. A priceless creation if he could manage it.
A flutter, a shudder, a sigh, and a hand came up to restrain his own. "Stop that, En."
"Why? Does it bother you?" He had forgotten how ticklish Jack was. No matter. Ennis had gathered enough beads together to savor inside his mouth; another mountain memory made all the more unforgettable.
"No. It's jus that...it's late." Legs moving, chafing together, trying to keep something at bay. "Them stupid sheep are gonna--"
"I know what time it is," he said, could swear he felt the heat begin to rise again just outside the perimeter of sense. "So? Still a long way from sunrise."
A suggestive groan. "See how your doin that gets to me?" He looked down in surprise. Could Jack be ready to go again, so soon?
"Yeah, I see," spoken through a smile. There was warmth now coming up through Jack's tepid and pale skin, no doubt about it now, his breath already going heavy and thick with renewed arousal.
"A man needs to jus sleep once in a while." Common sense was trying to prevail, but all Ennis could see were those pearls, and how they changed and ran liquid from all that sudden but careful movement. It was maddening, how much his body still craved him.
"Sure enough. But I don't think now is the time." Reason and logic had no place here. All that belonged was them, and this hunger. "Do you?"
He bent and captured those swollen lips again, drawing out then swallowing up all words and breath and protest, and rose up over him like a great wave of foaming water, breaking over that eager body like a pounding surf against a yielding shore, over and over and over.
This is what he remembered.
Saltwater
"Help me with my earrings, honey? These screw-backs are so hard to fasten right."
"Sure, Alma," he replied, reaching up with clumsy man-hands to try and work the tricky clasps closed.
He took in their proper Sunday morning reflection in the bathroom mirror, husband and wife to the world but barely so to each other, watched those petite ivory hands with their pink knuckles delicately finger the ancient choker at her throat, the loose cotton string just barely holding the small but weighty pearls together.
Pearls. He suddenly wanted to rip the damn thing right off her neck.
Just break the clasp and set them loose, cut apart the little knots that held each one in line, watch them scatter and fall in a shower across that body, the body he could so clearly picture lying prone before him right now, naked and glowing and wet and beautiful, still so very beautiful. To see Jack's skin dappled with that lovely opalescent glow just once more; to have those arms, those legs, opening wide for him and only him. And then...and then...
He touched the strand, smiling but not at her, gently ran fingers across those smooth and rounded bumps as he mouthed the nape of her neck, wondering what the hard cool beads might taste like if he crushed them to powder between his teeth.
"Guess I'll have to hock this when the baby comes," she remarked sadly, leading Ennis' other hand down to rest against her swollen belly. "Don't think my Great-Grandma would have minded all that much, what with pearls supposed to remind a lady of tears an all."
"I'm sorry, Alma," he said, and he was -- for many things. He rocked her back and forth a little, but didn't hum in her ear.
She closed her eyes. "S'alright, En. Our child needs diapers and formula more than I need these decorations."
"Alright." Might just be enough to help keep them above water. Then it wouldn't be laying around in that box on their dresser to remind him anymore.
Good.
This is how he survived.
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