Chapter Text
From the moment he stepped off the plane, Ennis knew he was going to like it here. Although France would never be his first pick, a series of slightly drunken decisions had led him here and that had to be some sort of sign, surely. Not that he believed in any of that, but it was a nice idea nonetheless. The air felt slightly damper and thinner than he was used to, but he enjoyed the way it clung to his skin, it cooled him.
He didn’t even mind the cramped shuttle bus from the plane to the airport, nor the hour long wait for his luggage to come trundling towards him on the conveyor belt, his bag depressingly small in comparison to the others. He kept reminding himself that he had made it.
He was in Paris. The city of love, and all that. He watched the people as they milled around him, laughing and chattering away in various dialects, mostly loud-mouthed Americans not unlike him. He was happy to be alone, but having
someone to talk to wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world.
The city of love, he kept thinking. Paris.
His mother had always told him he’d end up alone. Practically raised him on the idea. Ennis supposed it was her way of coping with the fact her son wouldn’t end up living out the perfect nuclear life she had imagined for him, the one with a wife and two kids and a tidy suburban home.
She was preparing herself for disappointment; She’d rather have her son live and die alone than the alternative. Her son ending up married to a man. It wasn’t legal everywhere, but it wasn’t punishable by prison anymore. Not that Ennis ever would, he was far too much of a coward for that. But it was a nice idea, one he kept tucked away with the rest of his nonsensical whims and aspirations.
His first steps on non-American soil felt like stepping onto mars. Everyone looked different, not just in the way they dressed. It seemed to be split down the middle. Half the people around him bore the brightest smiles he had ever seen, the other half frowned so deeply their mouths must have ached.
He had made a variety of assumptions before his trip, and they were slowly being proved wrong as he clumsily traversed the packed streets of Paris, map in hand. He was aware how he looked, painfully so. Like a redneck out of Texas. He was already lost, flushed and sweating under his layers of denim and cotton.
When he reached his hotel, he spent several minutes unpacking his clothes and tucking them into the empty drawers before collapsing on his bed with a heavy sigh. From where he laid, he felt like he could see the whole city. Lights glistened across the skyline, a mirror image of the star speckled sky back home. He was used to silence as he slept, sparing the sounds of crickets or cows, nothing like the rumble of traffic below him now, down on the streets.
But despite the noise and the stench of smoke and the cheap, motel style mattress he lay on, he felt a deep relief deep in his bones. No longer was a he simple, bumbling rancher. Here, he could be whoever he wanted.
His throat felt tight. He knew he was dreaming, but it wasn’t the type of dream he could easily wake himself up from. There was nothing to cling to, no real life thoughts to pull him back to life.
He had had this dream several times before. Lying on his back, he felt for his surroundings. A thin blanket covered him from the ass biting chill outside, and when he forced his eyes open he was hit with a familiar fogginess. He was in a tent, one of the old fashioned teepee style ones with stretched fabric sheets to make a cover, barely thick enough to shield him from the weather outside.
A man lay to his right. This dream plagued him. It stuck in his mind and haunted his thoughts, because the man never turned. He always had his back turned, he never made a sound, aside from each soft, steady breath he took. Ennis, as usual, resisted the urge to reach out to the man— The idea sent a sour, guilty shiver through him. The clothes he wore, clothes he had never even seen in real life, scratched at his burning skin. The tent, a tent he had never stepped foot in, felt as though it was deflating around him, jostling him closer to the sleeping body as it lay, serene. It was a constant fixed point in Eniss’s head, one he could never identity, one who never wanted to leave him be.
He hated it. He wished with every fibre of his soul that the dreams would stop, but they never did. He had been a fool to think that an ocean would keep them at bay, but here in Paris they felt stronger than ever.