Title: Whispers

Author: Sonata Night

Rating: PG

Pairing: Jack/Ennis

Summary: Years had passed and he could hear Jack's whispers now.

Notes: Semi-angsty, semi-fluff, drabbly confection with a bit of a death!fic. 300 words.

Disclaimer: Fish are friends, not food - Erhm, I mean, all of this is purely from my imagination.

Archive: If you think it's good enough, drop me a line at and archive away.

lj-cut text"He'd grown old, understanding it but quietly unaffected."

He'd grown old, understanding it but quietly unaffected. For having a short temper with troubling things, this, he only accepted. He was to grow old, die, and whatever came next was how it was. He couldn't change it. He wasn't very old, only in his early seventies, but he was old enough.

He wondered a lot. How things might have turned out if Jack was alive. For him, for both of them, separate or together.

The AIDS crisis had come and gone. People were much more accepting about homosexuality. He was sure people wondered about him; he'd never remarried or really even dated again. There were dates, but nothing he could keep. That was gone, at a time when...

He remembered when. But he couldn't say it. Nor where, because it wasn't time. Time came, time went, and never stopped. The right time hadn't come yet but his time was gone.

He'd watched his girls grow and mature, marry, seen grandchildren, and one great-grandchild (thinking of Alma Junior as a grandmother made him wipe at sudden, confusing tears).

He still had the shirts after all these years. Every year on a few certain days (when they'd first met, first slept together, and the day Jack died), he would take the shirts down, hold them, and let his missing, pain, loneliness, all of it, encompass him.

He'd gone to bed, thinking of Jack, what their lives could have been like together. And now, he opened his eyes. Saw his room, saw a bright light that didn't come from the window. He raised his hand, noticed that it was filmy, grey. Heard the whispers, a voice that he knew and missed. He understood. He went to the light, to a time and place and to the person where bluebirds sing and whiskey streams flow forever.