#earthbooty

In real life though? Well, they never gave out relationship advice where he was trained. He feels like a rookie all over again, all nervous energy and loose ends fraying apart in his impatience. It sucks.

Jack isn’t ready, he’s not like Mark.

He has to keep telling himself that, no matter what his lizard brain keeps whispering to him—he’s yours, you’re soulmates, it works both ways.

Jack isn’t ready for all the things Mark wants to do to him.

He couldn’t handle Mark’s hands touching him in ways that aren’t gentle or polite, fingers grasping with intent and desire, leaving bruises in the dip of his neck. It’s too soon, they’ve barely met, and Jack needs time.

It’s scarcely been a month since they met and Mark sees Jack through rose colored glasses. The rest of the world is out of focus, unimportant like the blurred background of a photo, a photo in which Jack is the sole subject of the photographer’s lens. He stands out, quiet and unassuming, vibrating with a hidden energy that Mark wants to mesh with his own one day.

Mark has no idea what Jack looks like to everyone else, but he can see all of Jack’s potential when he looks at him, electrifying his skin, sparks jumping from limb to limb when he moves or tries to sit still. He’s a bomb with a smoking fuse, slow to burn but destructive enough to level Mark’s entire world in the space of a nanosecond.

Mark feels like he’s caught in that split second before the explosion, where everything is silent and the universe is in perfect order. The only thing hanging in the air is anticipation, and it feels drawn out and stretched thin, endless and boundless while Mark sits and waits for Jack to decimate the hills and valleys of his heart.

He watches Jack do everything carefully, like moving too fast will set things into motion too soon, and neither of them will be ready.

Mark is ready though.

He’s been ready since that first night in Jack’s kitchen, since he watched Jack transform from a man lying trapped in his own bed to a man with a metaphorical gun trained to Mark’s heart.

It’s funny to him how much Jack hates weapons of any kind, yet since their first meeting he’s had Mark’s entire existence at gunpoint, finger on the trigger to turn Mark’s insides out and his universe upside down. He’s a late night robber breaking into a vault that hasn’t been open in years, and Jack’s holding every inch of Mark hostage.

Mark’s got a case of rapid onset Stockholm Syndrome, glued to the side of the man who’s holding his life in his hands, and he’s hanging off his every word. Jack smiles at him from across the room sometimes, like he’s thinking about tossing Mark a bone, about coming closer and putting both of their lives on the line.

Mark knows that if their world exploded, Jack would still be just fine without him.

Maybe that’ll change in a few months or years; however long it takes for Jack’s heart to beat in double time with his own. Maybe one day soon Jack will look at him and his world will melt the way Mark’s does whenever he thinks about moving close enough to touch with intent.

For now, Mark will settle for the way it feels when he watches Jack try something for the first time, when his hands don’t shake after talking to a stranger on the streets, and the way his eyes sparkled the time he let Mark kiss him to sleep.

He’ll ignore the way it seems like his stomach is devouring himself and his nerves are firing off without his permission every time Jack sits close enough to touch and all Mark can do is want him, in every way one person can want another.

He wants to consume Jack’s whole being, take his whole heart for himself the way Jack stole his from him just a few weeks ago. But he can’t.

Mark can only love him from afar, until Jack chooses to come to him and ask for more. It’s cruel, he thinks, that the universe would arrange them this way—he’s never once thought he’d be the man pining after his own soulmate, waiting for him to bridge the gap between them, but here they are.

It’s not all bad. Jack lets Mark kiss his hands and hold him while they sleep and for all that Jack is relearning how to be a person, Mark thinks Jack knows that Mark is waiting on him. For all the training Mark’s ever received on how to slip on the perfect cover, to assume a flawless mask of someone that he’s not, Jack is not fooled by anything Mark has to say or do.

He pulls away every mask Mark’s ever worn with nimble, careful fingers and he discards them one by one. Jack sees how weak Mark is beneath the surface, how much he struggles to maintain himself, to be something worthy of Jack’s love and it must be enough, because he stays.

Jack doesn’t love him, not yet, but he chooses Mark every day. He chooses to stay with him, he chooses not to judge him for the blood on his hands or the years his job has stolen from him—will steal from the both of them. He chooses Mark because he wants to, and Mark knows that means that one day Jack’s love will be more than he deserves.

Mark was shoved off of this cliff face first, no other decisions to be made or paths to consider, and he’s made his peace with it. When Jack comes, it will be because he chooses to fall.

Mark is patient, he is kind, he is not selfish or pompous and he can wait. He has to.

Jack isn’t ready. He doesn’t love Mark. Not yet.

But he will.