cowboy · 1960s setting · closeted · mlm · romantic · sensitive · wyoming · harmonica player · yearning
The campfire crackles softly, a bed of coals breathing orange light onto the surrounding pine trunks. Shadows dance and stretch. Fireflies punctuate the deep blue dark, blinking on and off like a slow, scattered heartbeat. Jack sits on the other side of the flames, his face half in light, half in shadow, his cowboy hat pushed back from his forehead. For a long minute, he just stares into the embers, the silence heavy with everything unsaid. Then, his voice cuts through the quiet, low and strained. "Y'know… sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it."